


Cold Iron

by Filigree



Category: Eroica Yori Ai o Komete | From Eroica with Love
Genre: AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-24
Updated: 2010-11-24
Packaged: 2017-10-13 08:52:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/135427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Filigree/pseuds/Filigree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Klaus falls prey to his enemies, Dorian makes a terrible bargain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold Iron

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: (And I mean this): In this fic, you will find physical abuse and neglect, torture, rape, statutory rape, mutilation, revenge, angst-filled choices, silly bits, James, mushy bits, consensual homosexual acts, murder plots, fraud, James, supernatural agencies, ancient legends, massive doses of Joseph Campbell, bizarre switches of character POV, James, and two separate-though-reciprocal endings. While you don’t have to be a student of comparative mythologies to get some of the references, it helps.

Even on the darkest night when empty promise  
Means empty hand,  
And soldiers coming home like shadows turning red.  
When the lights of hope are fading quickly  
Then look to me –  
I’ll be your homing angel,  
I’ll be in your head.  
Because you’re lonely in your nightmare –  
Let me in.  
And there’s heat beneath your winter –  
Let me in.  
– ‘Lonely In Your Nightmare’, Duran Duran

 **Part One: Empty Hand**

Sit. Be still. Sit. Be quiet. Don’t move. Don’t think. Sit. Be quiet. Back itches, inside straitjacket. Scrape on padded wall. No itch. Sit. Be still. Don’t think – can’t think – don’t think –

* * *

On a garden terrace outside his North Downs castle, Dorian Red Gloria surveyed the evening sky. May’s full moon was a startling golden pearl, against an arch of deeper twilight spreading across the eastern horizon. The gardens were lush and green, the roses catching the last afterglow from the west.

“It will be autumn in a few months, your Lordship,” said James anxiously, not even fiddling with his calculator.

Dorian sniffed the air, watching a skein of geese circle a pond, then drift down to settle there for the night. The birds were calm now, but later they’d become restless, feeling the season’s clock inside their bodies. They’d lift away from his lands, bound for warmer climes.

“Yes,” he said aloud. Summer, which he’d once loved, was just an interval. One more empty season to be endured.

“Autumn. October. All Hallows Eve,” James clarified.

“Samhain,” Dorian automatically gave the holiday its ancient name. A night of laughter and lanterns, spirits and mysteries, of doors opened – and shut again, perhaps forever.

“You’ll be spending the night on that hill again, won’t you?” That hill waited on the edge of the estate’s parkland, less than three hundred metres away to the east. In fall, it would be directly under the rising moon, a low insignificant mound, crowned with a tangled grove of oak trees.

“Yes, James.”

“Oh, milord, no! Please don’t go. Stay here with us on All Hallows – we’ll have games and a masque. I’ll buy a really good cake – “

“James, if my cousins are stopping by for a visit, it’s only polite that I go to greet them.”

“Worse than gypsies, they are. They always ask you to come with them,” James sulked. “And this year – “

“And this year,” Dorian sighed. “Maybe I’ll go.”

“We’re still here,” James begged, cuddling against Dorian. “We’re your family, too. And we love you, Lord Gloria – “

“I know. I love you all, too. And it hurts me to say this – but that isn’t enough. Not with the Major – gone. I feel empty inside. Wrung out. Stretched thin.”

“Don’t go, this time,” James urged, pulling Dorian back from the twilight, toward a door open to mortal warmth and cheer.

To humour the little accountant, Dorian followed tamely. But his mind was full of moonlight on oak trees, and a half-remembered beauty that was almost enough to eclipse his heartache.

“Lord Gloria? Lord Gloria!” Bonham called. “Telephone!”

“Tell whoever it is to go away,” Dorian called back.

“It’s Bonn!”

“Fuck Bonn!” he swore savagely, feeling a familiar wrench of betrayal. His Major had been kidnapped for over two years, very likely _dead_ and dumped somewhere in Russia. All of Dorian’s contacts hadn’t been able to find him – or hadn’t dared run up against the Major’s latest enemy. That shrinking, frightened silence had finally convinced Dorian that Klaus was dead – and not in a clean, professional way. And no one from NATO had ever called, until now. Dorian had had to learn of the Major’s disappearance, early that first terrible year, by calling Agent A at the Bonn office.

“It’s the Chief. He’s very insistent.”

* * *

Sit. Sit. Sit. Be still. Knee itches. Can’t scratch. Need hands! Hate straitjacket. Scrape knee on wall. Good. Sit. Hate sitting. Must move. Pace, pace, pace, pace, pace. Can’t think. Won’t think. Mustn’t think. Cool air. New smell? Flowers. Sit. Pretty flowers. Lean back. Close eyes. Remember red flowers.

 _Don’t think!_

* * *

“You’ve had him for three months, and _you didn’t call?_ ”

“We’ve been trying to put him back together,” said the Chief. “Believe it or not, there is some improvement. He stays awake most of the day, now. For the first month, he was completely catatonic. Our best doctors have done what they could – “

“Well, do some more! That’s the Major in there! Why didn’t you call me sooner?”

“Because they tell me he won’t get any better than this. Because now I want revenge,” said the Chief, leaning forward into his seat, gaze fixed on the room beyond the one-way mirror. “But NATO won’t let me have it. Not on the record.”

Dorian, also, could not look away. “Off the record?”

“I want you to find out how far up this travesty went. Who knew about it, in the Kremlin. And I want you to make them pay.”

“The Russians did this?”

A cough from the Chief. “Technically, yes. They were warned against trying it, with any of our top agents. Told what the consequences would be. They didn’t believe us – did it anyway. We would never have known he was still alive. Your old friend Mischa found him. Busted the Major out of – the place they held him in – and secretly delivered him to the German Embassy in Moscow, the first week of March. He said there were some things even he could not condone.”

“Was this some kind of fucking spy arms race?” Dorian’s voice cracked in outrage. “What happened?”

“We had proof the Russian biochemists had developed a new kind of interrogation drug – a truth serum that worked flawlessly and permanently. We didn’t have enough of the chemical code to figure out a vaccination, but we could cobble together a fail-safe.” The sagging, sad face turned toward Dorian then, eyes lowered. “A self-destruct mechanism. Less than an hour after it combines with the Russian serum, it destroys the brain’s communication and recognition centres. The subject can’t talk or write if he can’t think coherently.”

“Oh, God.”

“The Major volunteered to have the fail-safe drugs administered, before his last mission. A man with his knowledge – with the keys to so many puzzles? He asked for this. And at least we know the fail-safe worked.”

“You did this to him.” Dorian’s rage was palpable in the room, an emotion the Chief had never associated with Eberbach’s too-pretty tame thief. “And you can’t change him back?”

“The brain damage is permanent, I’m told. Along with the surgeries the Russians performed, while they were trying to figure out what – “

“Surgeries?” Dorian whispered, watching that gaunt figure in the padded room.

“Brain work. And at some point, for some reason, they destroyed his vocal cords. Even if we could get him to understand us, he’ll never speak again.”

“ _Damn all of you._ So now what? What about his family?”

Another cough. “The Graf von dem Eberbach knows. I understand that one of the Eberbach cousins is now being trained to take over the heirship.”

“Such familial loyalty,” Dorian sneered. “So Klaus stays here in this sanitarium until he dies? In what, thirty or forty years?”

“Lord Gloria,” the Chief sounded miserable. “He was one of my best agents. A good man, for all his antisocial personality. But we can’t help him, now. We can’t place him in a civilian hospital or group home – he’s still a security risk. He needs – special care.”

“You’ve kept him in a straitjacket, all this time!”

The Chief’s face flushed.

“Lord Gloria, he’s restrained for a reason. That is the hulk of a very dangerous man – he’s weak, but he can still kill or maim with his bare hands. We can’t – we can’t keep him like this. There’s no reason to. Not anymore, not if he can’t get better. The doctors want to study – “

Dorian’s gaze tore from the window, as the Chief’s tone and words added up to an even more horrible conclusion. “No,” said Dorian. “No double-speak. Say it. Tell me that you’re going to kill him.”

“He’ll be put down next week.”

“That’s illegal.”

“He signed the paperwork long ago, Lord Gloria. He didn’t want – didn’t want to be a vegetable, if anything happened.”

“I don’t care. You can’t just kill him!”

“It would be kinder – “

“Maybe I don’t want to be kind to him! Maybe I want whatever part of him that is still alive in there to be howling and hurt! At least that’s a kind of consciousness, isn’t it? If he’s improved a little, he might improve again. We just have to give him time, and care, in a better place than this – “

“Lord Gloria –” The thief blinked, blue eyes swimming with tears. Even in rage and pain, the Chief thought, the man was too lovely to be real. “Eroica, you have skills and contacts that might get you information we are not allowed to obtain or analyse.”

Again, meanings that could not be said out loud, trickled into Dorian’s awareness. “International security would be at stake, if you did?”

The Chief nodded silently.

“You know my traditional methods and targets. I’ve never – never done that kind of work.”

The Chief nodded again. “So no one would suspect it of you. This once, you have good reason to change your modus operandi, Eroica.”

Blue eyes narrowed. “And adequate payment?”

“Like all your other contract work, this would be very off-the-record. Offshore dummy accounts, Swiss banks, quadruple laundering-schemes. The usual.”

“I don’t want any more of your filthy money,” said Eroica. “I want to see him.”

“You are.”

“Let me in there, to see him – “

* * *

Huddle on bench. Face against wall. Stronger scent. Flowers. Voice calling. Sweet voice. Hands touching shoulders, touching face. Flinch! Wait for pain. Hands stay. Don’t move. Don’t look. Don’t think. Don’t move. Gentle hands. No pain. Kind voice. Good. Safe. Happy. Shut eyes. Breathe scent. Rest now –

* * *

“Do you understand, now?” said the Chief as the thief stepped back into a blandly-anonymous hospital hall. Two massive male orderlies shut and locked the door. “He responded well to you. He is not usually that relaxed when another person is near him.”

White-faced, Dorian sagged against the wall, one fist knuckled against his mouth. He got back enough control to speak, finally. “He’s been hurt too often. Why do that – keep on torturing someone who can’t answer, anyway?”

“Not just tortured,” said the Chief, neutrally.

Dorian went very still. “I see. Have you tested him for AIDS?”

“He’s clean. They were careful, I think, and he was – valuable.”

“ _He still is._ Keep him alive. Make him as comfortable as you can,” said Dorian. “I’ll be back in a few weeks.”

“Where are you going?”

“Home, first. Then Russia. And one other thing – “

“Yes, Eroica?”

“If he’s not alive when I get back, you’re going to wish the Russians had _you_ – “

* * *

The family legends had been vague enough when Dorian had started researching them, even before he’d met the Major. Somewhere back in Saxon times, some man of his family had taken to wife a beautiful girl he’d met on May Eve. She’d loved harps, the legends said. She’d drop her spinning, even set down her new-born son, to seek out harp-songs whenever she heard them. Many a minstrel was startled out of his wits so, by the sudden appearance of that tall golden lady by his campfire.

She had been fey, a Sidhe-woman enduring the world for the love of a mortal man. And when he died in battle, she followed one last harp-song back into Faerie, forgetting home and hearth and thirteen-year-old son –

But the blood remained, surfacing every so often in a child with her Midsummer-sky eyes and lustrous gold hair, her love of beauty and her restlessness. Five times, the fey blood was strong enough to distill that ancestress’ power into a half-mortal scion.

The last time, it had been his pirate kinsman Benedict. Who must not have known the power he could have claimed to exact revenge upon his enemies, by virtue of that blood. Or else Dorian’s line would have ended there.

No, Dorian wasn’t being as irresponsible as that many-times great-grandmother. He had sisters, fully-mortal nephews who might one day take up the title and estates of Lord Gloria. He wished them joy of it.

He stood barefoot on the summit of the hill, one long-fingered hand pressed against a twisted oak-tree. The leaves were dappled in noon sunlight and cloud-shadow, the wind swirling softly in the long grass of the clearing.

If Dorian listened, he could almost hear words in the wind’s voice, in a language that his very blood and bones recognized. Kilometres inland from the shore, he heard the thin calls of gulls, and the slow hissing heartbeat of surf. Clouds billowed overhead, their bellies blue-purple, silver-limned on their sunward edges. In those airy towers and gulfs he almost saw unfamiliar mountains, alien vales, and the paths that could lead him through them. The warm earth under his feet vibrated with a deeper pulse than that of airplanes and lorries, factories and steely cities –

He’d loved his life so very much – the art, the daring thefts as elegant as his targets, his wonderful adopted family of thieves, and the game of love he played with his prickly, ever-resistant Major. He had only a few kisses, stolen now and then, and repaid with insults and blows. No matter – Dorian had sensed his Major’s weakening resolve during their last meetings. It would not have been long before Klaus became his lover, perfecting everything.

Not to be, now. Not in the way it should have been. A kind descent into dignified old age, with the man he loved safe by his side.

What was left?

The art was hollow dross, the thefts a shameful waste of his talents. Sex? He didn’t want it. Hadn’t wanted it without Klaus for a long time, and now –

The mere thought – of using that broken mind, that mindless body, for his own pleasure – left Dorian nauseated and shaking.

He hugged the oak tree, face buried against the bark, and sobbed like a child. His tears slid down to water the earth, bringing up a sharp scent like summer rain on dust.

There was no thunderclap, no ray of sunlight or sparkle of technicolour magic. No oracle to warn about the costs of his irrevocable choice. No need, really. For the last two decades, there had been only one true reason he’d tried to be human. No reason, now.

Dorian cried himself out over the next two hours, until all his tears were dry. Until his heart was calmer and his mind could fathom the energies slowly waking within it.

There was no one with him, to mark how drowningly-blue his eyes were. Or how sunlight seemed to shimmer in his hair, even in the double-shadow of trees under clouds.

* * *

His three-day business trip in Russia began in a quiet apartment enlivened with assorted homey knickknacks. If Dorian’s sense of humour hadn’t evaporated with his tears, he’d have laughed himself silly over Mischa’s wife’s idea of interior decorating.

The woman was off on a surprise visit to her grandchildren; it seemed Mischa’s instincts were still sharp after retirement. He waited for Dorian in the parlour.

“Eroica,” he greeted his visitor calmly, not getting up from a battered old easy chair. “I’ve been waiting for someone. An Alphabet, I thought. I did not expect you.” The tired eyes focused on Dorian, widened a little. “You are different, pretty thief. Harder. I should not be too surprised. It is as if you and the Iron Major were two sides of the same equation. Change one value – and the other shifts, in reciprocity. Vodka?” he indicated the bottle and empty shot-glasses on the table beside him.

It was good vodka, crisp and biting-cold on Dorian’s tongue. He wasn’t worried anymore about poison or drugs, not after seeing the haunted look in the old KGB man’s eyes. “Do you know why I am here?” Dorian asked, without sitting in the other chair.

“I can guess.”

“Do you know what I must ask you?”

“I can guess that, too, Eroica. But will you believe me when I tell you the truth?”

Dorian swayed forward, set one hand palm-down across Mischa’s brow. “I will now.”

“I did not touch him,” snarled the old agent, voice shaking. “What they did – it would have been cleaner and kinder to shoot him! I could not leave him in that place. It took skill and contacts to get him out, without anyone knowing it was me. I killed men I had trained and loved as sons, to hide that secret. But I did not touch him – “

“One kiss on the cheek, when you left him on the Embassy steps,” Dorian reminded, seeing far more of the memories than Mischa was able to tell.

“A goodbye,” wept the agent, “and a god-bless.”

“I believe you,” said the assassin, and left without bloodshed.

* * *

The titanium knife settled cool against the doctor’s throat. “Hullo,” purred a beautiful English voice. “Sorry I can’t stay and play very long, but I don’t have time to waste with little fish like you.”

“Urk!” said the doctor, flailing for an emergency button on his desk. Another knife flashed down, pinning the hand an infinite six centimetres from the button.

The doctor screamed and writhed, but the blade at his throat never moved.

“I know you’re all alone on this floor, tonight. Oh, yes, your assistants? I’m afraid they had an accident. And the building security is quite secure in believing that I’m not here.”

“What – what do you want?” the doctor gasped in English.

“I wanted the sun, the moon, and the stars,” hissed the voice in his ear. “But since you took them away from me, I’ll just have to be content with the nasty little secrets you have locked in that cesspool of a mind.”

“Won’t talk!” the doctor panted, trying to decide how best to attack his attacker.

“You won’t. Ever again. That’s what this is for,” said the assassin, sliding the flat of his blade lovingly across the doctor’s throat. “But first we’re going to play ‘Twenty Questions’. What do you know about Major Klaus Heinz von dem Eberbach, of NATO?”

The voice, which should have been recognized immediately, hadn’t matched up to the actions. “Eroica?” the doctor stammered in disbelief. “But you don’t kill – “

“I asked nicely. You answer now. The more you fight to keep quiet, the clearer I can see the truth boiling off your mind like filthy steam – “

* * *

Of course, there had been proof: still shots and beautifully-edited videos, recording the engineered descent of a man. Not at the medical facility itself, but at the places next on Dorian’s itinerary – a brothel at an exclusive resort on the Black Sea coast, a vault back in Moscow. The DVD currently in Dorian’s haversack did not hold the worst of what he’d seen and destroyed. But it was shocking and evocative, his own proof banked against future need.

Getting from Moscow to Switzerland was interesting, given the chaos he’d left in his wake. The domestic commuter flight to Gstaad gave Dorian enough time for a brief nap. He didn’t sleep as much or as deeply as he’d used to, and his dozing reveries were now threaded with vivid dreams, visions, and bits of other people’s memories –

 _“What the hell is that noise?” said the new neurological specialist, jumping when a particularly loud cry in the next room died into rhythmic whimpers and grunts._

 _The doctor shrugged, having got used to the din. “The guards are having a little fun again. Who cares? Not like it matters. Eberbach’s not much more than a blow-up doll, anymore.”_

 _The specialist grinned. “Dolls don’t scream.”_

 _“He screams when they fuck him. He screams when they hose him down. He screams when he’s hungry and when they give him food. He screams for any reason and no reason. He can’t think – it doesn’t mean anything.”_

 _“Huh. Still, you should quiet that racket.”_

 _The doctor eyed a scalpel on his desk. Yes, the noise was distracting. Something must be done, if the idiot was to be at all presentable for his new tasks. But not the tongue – such a waste of training and natural ability. He remembered his own first after-hours lessons, administered to a virgin-tight ivory body trussed face-up on a steel table. He’d shown the guards and a few important spectators what could be achieved with skill, patience, and lubricant: a rape more insidious than bloodstained physical mastery. The subject might be near-mindless, but his body’s pleasure needed no guidance. And watching pure lust dawn across the face of Iron Klaus – ah, it had been perfect._

Dorian woke calmly, heart rate even, breathing slow. The plane was approaching the picturesque mountains of Gstaad, where streetlamps and windows twinkled in deepening dusk.

* * *

After he’d spent a productive evening searching the beautifully-austere modernist flat, Dorian heard the door alarm click and turn off. He draped himself against the wetbar, glad he hadn’t needed to turn the lights on for his browsing.

A tall, distinguished-looking older gentleman ducked through the door, closed it silently and efficiently. Pressed a few more buttons on a handheld remote. A soothing glow brightened over the whole kitchen and parlour area.

Muttering in German, the flat’s owner stalked in a beeline for the bar.

“Drowning your sorrows, Herr Graf?” Dorian asked in English, still unnoticed only three feet away.

The man didn’t startle, merely swung into a karate-chop that would have broken Dorian’s collar-bone – if he’d still been there.

“Now, now, let’s not be hasty,” Dorian said, now behind the bar. “I’m here for legal reasons – I’ve no interest in your person or property, save for one thing.”

“Who are you?” the Graf growled.

“I am Dorian, Earl of Gloria. Your son and I were occasional colleagues in the service of NATO.”

Comprehension – and dismissal. “Ah. The art-expert fag. Ja, I’ve heard of you. What do you want of me? The family paintings belong at Schloss Eberbach – I don’t have dispensation of them.”

Dorian slid a sheaf of densely-printed papers across the wetbar’s grey marble surface. “This is your quitclaim to Klaus. Sign it – and he’ll disappear. You or NATO won’t have to worry about feeding him, housing him, or keeping him healthy ever again – “

The Graf snorted. “I signed the next-of-kin release papers last month. Did they delay the procedure, for some reason? He should be dead and on an autopsy table by now.”

Dorian did not wince. “I made them keep him alive. Did you ever visit him?”

“Ja. In the first month. It seemed kinder to let him go – “ Even discipline could not hide the bewildered pain and shame that too-strongly set the man’s lips and chin. So, the harsh old father felt regret. That softened Dorian’s opinion, but not his intent.

“Let me take care of him. I know specialists who can help.”

A flash of outrage. “So you could rape him as those filthy Russians did, play out your sick games with someone who can’t resist you anymore? Nein!”

“Every ‘filthy Russian’ who abused him – is dead,” Dorian hissed with icy finality. “I was in love with a man, not his shell. I couldn’t touch him without his consent – and he will never be able to give that, now, will he?”

“They are dead?” Icy blue eyes scanned Dorian with more care. “I have been reading the papers. You had something to do with that – mess? In Moscow?”

“A small part.”

“Do you understand why there must be a new heir? We did not mean to hide him away, but we cannot care for him. Not as they have re-made him. The doctors think no one can. “

“I can try. If – there is no hope, his death will be painless and quick, I’ll swear that, too. But we have to try.”

For over a minute, they stared at each other. Dorian didn’t know what the old Graf saw in him, and did not care. Looking at the age-softened but still-handsome lines of an Eberbach’s face hurt. The way the eyes glittered alertly, the mind active and powerful behind them – Klaus might have looked like that, past eighty.

The Graf placed one lean, lightly-spotted hand on the papers. “I trust you. I will sign. Do what you can, for the sake of the man he once was.”

* * *

These late-night encounters were working so well, Dorian decided not to change his tactics in Bonn.

He let one footstep deliberately crinkle over a pile of computer printouts on the study floor.

The Chief looked up, to find a beautiful, black-clad spectre standing there. Hair more silvery than gold in the low light. Skin like pearl. Eyes – the Chief blinked away from those wide, fiercely-blue eyes.

“I’m back,” Dorian said tonelessly. “Miss me?”

The Chief stood, dropping his newspaper. “How did you get into my house?”

A shrug. “Walked through the wall.”

“Very funny, Eroica.” The old agent pointed down at the newspaper. “Do you know what’s happening in Russia, right now? A power struggle, that’s what!”

Another shrug. “The spymaster and his cronies were getting too powerful, anyway. You wanted revenge. There it is. Make use of it. The rebels are more than delighted to claim responsibility, and the moderates are rejoicing a chance to build a saner Russia. I have no regrets.”

“We’re all still figuring out how you – “

Dorian sniffed, all elegant affront. “I have skills NATO never commanded – and never will, now. Our association has ended, as of my receipt of payment.”

That got him a sharp look from those deceptively-piggish eyes. “You could join NATO. Be Eberbach’s legacy, and just as formidable a commander – “

“No, Chief. This isn’t my fight, anymore. About my fee – “

“You said you didn’t want money.”

“I don’t. I want Klaus Heinz von dem Eberbach, cleaned and dressed in something comfortable. Drug him down if you must, but get that goddamned straitjacket off him. I want him in a wheelchair at this gate at the airport – ” Dorian handed over a note “–at seven-thirty tomorrow morning.”

“He’s a German citizen – “

“Who was slated for merciful euthanasia two weeks ago. You said it yourself – NATO has tried everything. I know some people who might be able to help. His father has agreed. Let me try?”

The Chief was looking at Dorian with undisguised shock. “Even you couldn’t be so low – “

Dorian laughed, a lovely and chilling sound. “I could no more touch him now than I could touch a child. Not all perverts are monsters, Chief – “ He favoured the man with an eagle’s cool stare. “Don’t judge me by the things festering in your own mind. And stay the hell away from Agent G, from now on. He’s not your personal toy and pretty little enabler.” Dorian stood up, ignoring the open-mouthed silence from the Chief. “I hope we never see each other again. Give me Klaus. Don’t follow me, don’t sell out my team to Interpol, and don’t expect me to save the world’s ass ever again. I’ll see that certain negatives and copies of documents never come to light, detailing the business deals you’ve had on the side, with everyone from the Russians to the Iraqis.”

“You bastard! What the hell are you?”

“One of the Gentry, didn’t you know?” Dorian bowed gracefully, sweeping an invisible hat off his head in mocking salute. “Count your blessings, Chief. You’re one of two lucky people among fifty-seven. You had the decency not to touch him – even though you wanted to.”

The Chief sat down hard, shaking, as Eroica walked away _straight through the wall._

 **Part Two: Soldiers Coming Home**

Long ago, Dorian had prepared places for Klaus, within every bolthole and property of Eroica and Lord Gloria. Refuges, not love-nests. Suites and rooms warm with restrained decoration and the comforts a military man might appreciate: books, computers, kitchenettes, attached and private baths, comfortable chairs and sofas, desks on which to write those interminable reports –

Now Dorian sat in the paling amethyst light of dawn, watching a naked, sleeping man huddle in the center of a large bed. The sedative that had kept Klaus unconscious while traveling would wear off soon. Dorian had an entire foam-lined case filled with needles of the stuff, and an open prescription for more. NATO, in its embarrassment, would rather that he keep Klaus drugged down forever.

Seen without the animus of his personality, Klaus was appallingly unattractive. A fuzz of stubble darkened the man’s shaved head and hollow cheeks. Long and beaky nose, too-sharp chin, slack mouth, eyesockets so dark as to look bruised. Back, buttocks, and thighs spotted with weeping bedsores, from NATO’s attempts to keep him asleep and controlled. Shoulders scarred with dozens of shiny pink cigarette burns, from the drastic method his Russian handlers had used to break his nicotine habit – on a wealthy client’s whim.

Klaus looked like a corpse freshly-tossed in a mass grave, except for the slow rise and fall of his chest. His only grace-notes were the silken brush of long, black eyelashes on his cheeks.

Dorian reached out, one deceptively-fine hand resting gently over Klaus’ nose and mouth. Warm breath feathered against his palm. It would be so easy to pinch and hold for the two or three minutes necessary.

But that steady, stubborn breathing spoke of a creature fighting to retain what little life remained to it, on whatever terms the universe allowed.

Dorian moved his hand away, sat back in his bedside chair, and picked up a book he wasn’t really reading.

* * *

Less than a day after he’d returned to the North Downs estate, the thief’s suspicions about the straitjacket and the drugs were proven right. Never far from his still-groggy charge, Dorian heard movement and gasping breaths in the bedroom.

* * *

Strange light. New scents. Confused. Scared!

Must escape.

Need. Need. Need this, want this. No bad voices. No bad touches. No hurt. Joy –

* * *

Dorian stopped in the doorway, unable to look away or even think, as a long body writhed face-down on the wadded covers. Humping them, pelvis moving in unmistakable thrusts, fingers flexing and straining in the sheets. The sharp contours of the buttocks shifted as well, Klaus’ legs splaying to reveal the cleft between them. Climax passed in a shudder and a faint whistling gasp – before the knives had silenced Klaus forever, that might have been a full-throated scream.

It was the most sordid, unarousing thing Dorian had ever seen. But he would not call Bonham or Jones to help him move Klaus and put clean sheets on the bed. He did it himself, in thirty minutes of brisk work. Rolled onto his back, Klaus didn’t seem able to focus visually on Dorian. But he responded to touch, as Dorian wiped the man’s still-hard erection clean with a wet cloth.

Oh, God, the ways he responded!

* * *

Smell flowers. Kind voice. Safe. Good touch. Want this. _Need_ this. Help?

* * *

“My darling,” Dorian hissed at the end of it, with Klaus fetally-huddled once more on fresh linen, “You have at long last made me a virtuous man – “

Only the slight shaking of Klaus’ shoulders told Dorian the man was crying. Klaus’ mouth was set in a stubborn expressionless line, his arms crossed in the invisible mold of the straitjacket. His eyes were as dry of tears as Dorian’s –

Animals penned in dismal zoos sometimes became oversexed out of boredom, Dorian knew. But this – he knew this behaviour’s genesis. The only way to train Klaus out of it would be to overcome temptation. To not react. To give the man so many other stimuli, he felt no need for that one. There would be music. Bright colours. Scent and taste and touch. Everything one would want – for a newborn babe just opening its eyes.

That evening, Dorian bluntly told his team what to expect.

“Good God,” said Bonham, shocked. “Our Uncle NATO?”

“ – Is gone,” Dorian said, glad of the new emotional numbness he’d felt ever since he’d cried in the oak grove. “We have the brain-damaged victim of unbelievable abuse to care for, now.”

“We’re thieves,” James sulked. “Not hospice nurses. Do you know how much home-care like this is going to cost! We’ll have to knock over a mint, every month! Send him back to NATO.”

“No more thefts for a while, James,” Dorian told him. “I need to concentrate on Klaus – and you need to be propagating our assets in legal and aboveboard ways.”

James brightened a bit. “Milord! Can I play the American mutual funds?”

“Play,” Dorian smiled. “Just don’t lose them, or we’ll all be in the street.”

James _was_ a financial wizard. All the same, Dorian left Klaus long enough that first week to make a night-time funding foray of his own, coming back with some Swiss-issued bearer bonds that had been resting quietly in a London bank. He doubted the Middle-Eastern druglords who’d owned the dummy account would loudly protest its traceless disappearance: out of a locked box guarded by security cameras and sensors, no less!

For the most part, Dorian was content to trade tears for his new abilities.

* * *

A week later, some fool among Dorian’s thieves let Klaus have a goddamn _gun._

“I’m sorry, my lord,” Bonham whispered as he and Dorian edged nervously backward down the hall. “Either someone thought he’d snap back at seeing it, or – “

“Somebody wants him to off himself,” Dorian snarled. He had an idea who that might be. James had looked rather guilty all morning –

Swaying in his doorway, Klaus stared down at the bulky Magnum in his right hand. It wasn’t his gun, of course – that had likely been lost to the Russians. But the new one seemed to hold Klaus in rapt fascination. He turned the barrel around, to stare right down into the hole, thumb caressing the trigger.

“Loaded?” Dorian’s whisper was barely more than a breath. How fast could he move now? Faster than that thumb? And should he move, at all?

“Dunno,” came the equally-faint reply. “Oh god.”

* * *

Dark. Shiny. Cool. Heavy. Move thumb, could move thumb more. Wait. _Mustn’t._ Why? So pretty.

Best voice whispers. Where? Follow sound. There!

Play now?

* * *

The gun lifted. Swung unerringly to point at Dorian, a chilling replay of all the times that strong hand had pointed an identical gun at the thief. No hate or threat in that handsome face now, only remote interest.

“Noooo!” came a shrill yell from the other end of the hall, as James hurtled down it toward Klaus.

Dorian grabbed Bonham and rolled, as one bullet scarred the wainscoting over their heads. At the same time, James leapt bodily at Klaus. The two men fell backwards, tumbling in a pile of knees and elbows. The gun skittered across the oak floor, thankfully out of reach for either of them.

“No, no, no, you stupid German machine!” James shrieked, kneeling over Klaus and hitting him on the head, shoulders, and chest. “Kill _yourself_ and save us all the trouble!” Then the little accountant flinched backwards, reminded of Klaus’ past deadly manners.

But the thin, lanky man stayed where he’d fallen. Face emotionless, eyes open, pupils contracted to almost a black dot. James slapped him again, across the cheek. Green eyes blinked, then shut. The body underneath James seemed to relax more. Not struggling, not helping – but offering no resistance. The mouth opened, lips carefully pulled over teeth –

Dorian understood the response suddenly, and nearly threw up.

Klaus was catatonic for a week.

Dorian made a stunned and contrite James feed and clean up after him.

* * *

“There’s a good lad,” Therese crooned. “Sit quiet in the sunshine and play with these,” the old woman nudged a basket of brightly-coloured wooden alphabet blocks closer to Klaus’ reach. He sat crosslegged, comfortable in soft sweatpants, a pullover shirt, and loafers. He didn’t show any sign he’d understood her, but his eyes focused on the blocks. Lean hands buried themselves in the basket, overturning it and scattering the contents on Therese’s carpeted workroom floor.

“Is he making words at all?” she asked Dorian.

“Not that I could tell. I hoped – he might remember something, connect with us that way. Maybe even just recall _his_ Alphabets. I think he likes the colours – “

“His dexterity is good,” Therese said, watching the way Klaus played with the blocks: fingers moving with neat control, not the blundering whole-hand power grip of an infant or idiot.

Dorian’s indulgent smile never warmed his eyes. “James showed him how to do cat’s cradle designs with string, last week. You should have seen them, together – I never thought James was that patient with anything but numbers. Klaus isn’t afraid of him, anymore.”

The man’s hair had grown out to a black silken cap that curled slightly over his ears. Silver threaded the temples, a reminder of early middle-age that didn’t match the childlike mien. At one point, Dorian had tried letting his charge grow a beard, thinking that it might exorcise the Major’s ghost from this alien creature. But the man scratched so stubbornly at his scraggly cheeks, Dorian gave in and shaved him within a week. Klaus was eating well now, at least; his body wasn’t the thinned-down wreck that Dorian had claimed from NATO two months before. His physique was improving, too, from the walks Dorian or James took him on every morning and every night. He could, indeed, feed and clean himself most days. Though someone still had to watch him to make sure he didn’t fall asleep and drown in the bathtub.

‘Lord Gloria’s dog’, some of the villagers called Klaus, without cruelty. He did resemble some lean dark stray, following wherever a patient and gentle tug led him. He offered violence to no one. If, as in the gun incident, events became too loud and confusing for him, Klaus simply shut down.

“Klaus?” Dorian called now, reaching out to gently smooth the mussed hair.

* * *

Can’t think. Must think. Can’t think.

Must think!

Smooth. Hard, under fingertips. Edges sharp, but not hurting. Colour colour colour. Want colour. Touch surface – good. Trace curves and lines. Important. Don’t know why. Voices. Best voice. Best touch, stroking hair. Want touch. Colour more important. Shape important. Must think!

* * *

Most horrible of all: the man was still Klaus, at least in form. Beautiful to watch, even as this shattered relic. Dorian could kiss him on the forehead, hold his hand, hug him, and perform the intimate details of bathing or changing the adult undergarments Klaus sometimes had to wear. Anything more sensual than that seemed a blasphemy.

He sighed, taking his hand away from the unresponsive man on the floor. Perhaps NATO’s solution, or James’, would have been more merciful on them all – the black past erased in just a few moments by a potent syringe or a loaded gun. Then this helpless victim could be at peace.

I could be at peace, Dorian thought, ashamed of his selfishness. If he’d just died on a mission, I could remember him as he was. Not like this!

“Ah, milord, you mustn’t take it out on him. The poor fellow doesn’t know what he’s doing to you,” said Therese with all her accustomed skill at reading faces. “Now, about this new clothing of yours – you want it the same velvets and silks as always, or done up the Old Way?”

Therese had been a seamstress to the Gloria family since his father’s era. Skilled as any fashion-house couture mavin, and always game to whip up some bizarre and lovely outfit to show off her favourite ‘wee lord’, Therese had found this last year a bit trying. “I’m only asking because I’ve got some prepared already. Organically-grown undyed flax, retted in a clean stream, spun and woven without the touch of cold iron to mar it. It’s the neopagans, milord – they’ll pay dear for pure linen, and I’ve had to take in new clients, since you’ve become the hermit,” she apologized.

“James hasn’t been forwarding your retainer?” Dorian growled.

“Oh, I never want for money, milord. But I’ve been bored, without your larks – “

“Therese. I – I’m glad your skills are finding new outlets. Do you need more money, to actually turn it into a business? I’d like to think that all my people are set up, properly. Before I give up my title and retire on some quiet tropical island with Klaus.”

The old grey eyes welled up with tears. “My poor lord. You haven’t been looking to yourself, have you? And none of the boys would dare tell you – “

* * *

Shapes mean – sounds. Mustn’t make sounds. Sound from nose, from throat – means pain. No sound! Don’t think! Be good – no sound at all! Quiet, quiet, quiet!

Best touch. Comfort. Quiet now. Not scared.

No pain from sound, now.

No bad noises.

Happy.

Shape in hand. Touch flats and edges. How many flats? How many edges? Don’t know.

Voices make sounds. Good sounds. Best noise, sound that means –

No pain. Sleep. Eat. Play with shapes. More than play. Must think! Head hurts. Don’t stop! How many flats? How many edges? Too many. Hurts to think. Must think! Trace shape again with fingers. Know this! What?

One. Shape means sounds. Ein, uno, one.

Shape means I.

I. Ich. Me. I. A shape of six sides? Hands don’t look like that.

Wait. I look at my hands.

Myself. Not shapes, not other voices. Just me.

So happy!

* * *

“Know what? I’m retiring,” Dorian lied, “and I want Klaus to be with me.”

Therese sighed. “Don’t try that tone with me. Have you looked in a mirror lately, milord?”

Dorian thought about it. There hadn’t been any reason for vanity lately, beyond cleanliness. His men had seen him in all manner of disarray before – and there was no handsome German tank to unnerve and possibly seduce. “No. Why?”

“Look,” said Therese, opening her sewing caddy. She pulled out a tiny hand mirror in a plastic case. “You haven’t been out in the world at all, not in any way that people can see you – since you brought him back,” she said. “Or you might have seen what the rest of us have, on the estate. You’re lucky we love you so, lad. Or else the tabloids would have a field day – “

“Whatever for?” Dorian humoured her, slid the mirror out of its case. “Oh.”

Dorian’s hair was still a tumble of gold curls, but rainbows now glinted along the strands that were in direct sunlight. His face, already well-preserved for a man in his mid-forties, was smoother and pale, the flesh firm as it had been when he’d been nineteen. Eyes widened in the glass, their reflection as vivid as blue flames, or pools of evening sky.

“Oh, dear,” said Dorian.

“Yes, child. The Sidhe side of your heritage is taking over. What did you do?”

“I needed to kill, to be hard, to be magical, so that I could avenge – “

“Dorian,” said Therese, reaching across to hug him. “He needs you to be human, now. Not fey. Stop before it’s too late!”

For the first time in his life, some part of Dorian almost recoiled from that familiar touch. It stung, like mild acid or a static shock. “This can’t – I knew there was some of the magic in my family. But I’m not pure. I’m not true Sidhe!”

“You were born with the choice – to be human, or to be fey. You invited it into yourself, yes? So it came, following the path in your blood. And now it’s squeezing out the sunny little lad we knew for so long.” She sat back, shaking her head. “Now you are both not-quite-human. That is why the oak hill calls to you, and the moonlight, and the sea. The Sidhe will open the gate to you, this year.”

“I only wanted them to help me heal him! I don’t want to go – away.”

“And maybe the tide doesn’t want to leave, but stay to kiss the shore,” Therese sighed. “Oh, Dorian. The tide still ebbs – and you will still leave us for the roads into Faerie.”

“Old witch,” Dorian said, torn between snarling and laughing nervously. “And Klaus? Would they take him? Mortal and damaged as he is?”

“He is very lovely. And half-fey already, I think, from what has happened to him.”

They looked down again, to find Klaus staring raptly at the block in one hand. The other was raised, curled around his throat.

“Dear heart?” crooned Dorian. “What do you have?”

* * *

I. I. I hold. I see. I hear the best voice. I look up.

I see –

I don’t understand. Not angles, flats, edges. Not easy to see. Pink blur, yellow blur, blue blur. The best voice makes good sounds.

Remember – something important.

MUST THINK!

Voices come from – blurs.

Touch throat. I had a voice. Pain took it away.

I am a blur.

I am not alone. The best voice is here.

Deep breath. Head hurts. Keep thinking. Almost understanding –

Yes.

You are here.

With me.

* * *

The luminous grey-green gaze lifted. Wavered in Dorian’s general direction, so earnestly that Dorian almost saw a ghost of the Major in that intensity. Klaus handed him the block, nudging Dorian to take it. When the gift was accepted, Klaus favoured him with a dazzling smile.

No wonder James was so patient!

That smile was the sun, shining from behind clouds. The innocence and pure joy of it was heartbreaking. Those hadn’t been seen on that face, Dorian was certain, since Klaus had been a small boy. If then. If the old Klaus had ever grinned at him like that, Dorian knew he’d have given up thievery, title, wealth, and his very soul, just to see it again.

“Good Klaus,” he whispered, grateful that he couldn’t cry anymore. He petted that dark hair, traced fingers over the sharp-planed face and the glorious empty smile. “My poor, sweet darling.”

Klaus closed his eyes, still smiling, laid his head tamely on Dorian’s knee, and circled the Earl’s legs with one long arm. Within moments, he was asleep again, lost to the world he barely inhabited anyway.

 **Part Three: Homing Angel**

His Lordship was away on a solo night-jaunt to London again. James hoped the man would have sense to use those bizarre new skills carefully, without attracting too much attention. Just as well, that one of Lord Gloria’s newest tricks seemed to be a kind of invisibility that laughed at security cameras and lasers, as well as human eyes. James felt sorry for any policeman who tried to arrest Dorian now!

None of them – except Therese – called him ‘Dorian’ to his face anymore. He rarely went out in full daylight, and never touched ferrous metals. Threw away all his steel lockpicks! The red Maserati gathered dust in the garage. He didn’t even touch James, anymore.

James sighed, checking the bathwater. Good. Warm, but not scalding. They’d found out the hard way that Klaus would go ahead and bathe in overheated water. He’d burned himself, but didn’t protest the injury or its painful treatment.

For the first three months, it seemed that Klaus hadn’t realized he could deny any situation. Lord Gloria’s staunch refusal to touch Klaus had the hoped-for benefit. The man stopped presenting himself sexually. Stopped humping the carpets or the furniture, or trying to masturbate himself silly when he was frightened or bored or angry.

His bright, childlike warmth was still there. The disturbing sensuality burned low, like embers in ash. But when it flared –

Was it only a trained reaction? James shuddered, to think of that heat as a natural part of the stern and repressed German. To have that, and no outlet for it for all those years – and then lose the control, but not the fire. James was perversely glad that Klaus seemed to have little memory or understanding of what had happened to him. That seemed to lessen the horror of it.

“Water’s ready. Klaus? Bath?” James called softly into the dim bedroom. A long shape stood gracefully from its habitual huddle in the corner, wandered into the bathroom. His movements were diffident, graceful, reminding James of some shy predator coaxed in from the night.

James turned a dimmer switch, casting the bathroom into a faint amber glow. Klaus didn’t like bright lights, except sunshine. A hot white halogen lamp could still send the man into a curled-up austistic daze. Besides, the softer light was soothing, perfect for what would happen next.

Klaus slithered out of his baggy sweatpants without speed or shame, almost completely ignoring James. Someone was always with him when he bathed, to scrub his back and guard him from drowning. It was part of their wordless bargain with this strange creature – he wouldn’t flaunt himself at any other time, and if they didn’t interfere with this –

They could watch.

Lord Gloria loathed it, passed off bath duty whenever possible.

James adored the task. He gulped, feeling the swirl of misty air, as that sleek body passed so close. He smelled Klaus’ musk, a cleanly-inviting scent so different than the drug-harsh stink of those first days away from NATO’s care.

If the frightening machine-maniac of the Major was long-gone, so was the battered near-corpse Lord Gloria had brought back from Bonn. Now, every line of Klaus was temptation. Steel transmuted to silk: the flex of a bare foot stepping off the tiles, the sigh leaving soft lips, the trusting curve of the spine as Klaus settled into the half-filled tub. Black hair swirled around his face, inviting fingers to ruffle the feathery tresses. And oh, that magnificent erection, jutting from its dark thatch at his groin! James kept his moan to himself, poured liquid soap into a sponge, and started on Klaus’ back and shoulders. There, the burn scars had paled to silver dapples like a dragon’s scales.

Lord Gloria had shown them all the titanium knife he’d used in Russia. What he would do to anyone who touched Klaus the wrong way. They all understood it was no joke or empty threat. So, parts of Klaus were off-limits.

Not that it mattered. He could clean most of his own body, now. Seemed to understand that no one would fondle him with the intent to inflame. That his minders would move away, if he became aroused. He knew precisely what he wanted at such times, and needed no one but himself to gain it.

Klaus cupped one imperious hand, palm-up, for the generous dollop of soap that James poured for him.

Oh, my beautiful one, James thought eagerly, you could be some sacred king or entranced wizard. Not warped, not brutalized. Your silence is a holy thing. You are a wanton, virgin god. Why shouldn’t you worship yourself? And I’m your slave, loving you the only way I’m allowed. Offering the magic potions for you – watching you in dim light –

Klaus tilted his head back against the inflated pillow James had set up earlier. Sighed again in a little sideways slosh of warm water, slicked hands beginning a steady beat on his penis. His mouth parted in an ‘o’ of delight.

As always, James was torn between watching the action at Klaus’ groin, and the expressions on his face. Sometimes the pace was fast and hungry, sometimes devastatingly-slow. Tonight looked to be one of those times when Klaus’ lust could only be slaked by repeat performances.

A twitch of those pale shoulders warned James his scrubbing wasn’t wanted anymore, and he sat back in the chair by the bath. Silently, he peeled off his own boxer shorts – no need to get water on his good pajamas, was there? – and began a counterpoint stroking on his own erection.

* * *

Ohhhh. Joy. Warm, wet, slick, hard. I want this. I want –

Not you. Know you are here – a good voice, kind touch. Little dark blur. You were angry with me once. You play the string game with me. I hear you move, now. Like I move, toward joy. Smell you. Good. But you are not the best voice, the best touch.

I want that!

* * *

They had climaxed, separately, two times. James was deliciously-exhausted, and Klaus dozed in the cooling bath. Time for bed. James touched a shoulder; it flinched again out of habit, too mellow to be irritated much at the intrusion.

“He’ll be back soon, Klaus. Get up.” With more urging, Klaus reluctantly stood, allowed himself to be sluiced off with warmer water and patted dry with a towel. “You’ll sleep all right now, I think. Here’s your pajama pants. Step in, and again – there, sweeting, you’re ready for bed.” James pulled the elastic waistband up around Klaus’ slim hips. He was startled when the man’s arms came around him in a tentative hug. Once Klaus grasped that his body was his own again, he didn’t often seek touches from anyone but Lord Gloria.

James hugged back, feeling a warmth safer than their previous need. A child in a man’s body – sometimes the child needed to be shown he was loved and protected, too.

They stood like that for long minutes, silent in the low light, until a shimmer outside the garden window warned James.

He never asked how Lord Gloria got into London and back, when he wouldn’t drive the Maserati – or even tolerate being long inside a chauffeured car. One time, James had looked out to see a smear of white light, and Lord Gloria stepping through it…

 _I am surrounded by beautiful and untouchable wizards, James thought in despair. “Go to sleep now,” he said, letting Klaus end the hug._

Klaus ignored the big luxurious bed, as always, stubbornly choosing his little knot of pillows, sheets, and blankets in the corner. But in another minute, he was cuddled against a pillow in his arms, smiling in his sleep.

“He is – clean?” Lord Gloria said, leaning in the doorway.

James nodded, easing aside. Witch-light still clung to Lord Gloria’s hair and skin, a faint white mist that spun away from him in swirls as he walked to the corner. In black jeans and a pullover, he looked more wild than ever, a prince of Faery wandering into the mortal world for only a night. He knelt in a curtain of golden curls, and kissed Klaus on the forehead.

“Good night, my sweet love,” Lord Gloria murmured, and sat beside the sleeping man. James wondered if Klaus dreamed of a tender hand stroking his hair and face, and a cool voice whispering promises into his ears. “I’ll make it better, darling, I will. You’ll come back to me, everything you were and more. I’ll make them accept you, heal you, no matter how much cold iron is in your blood – “

James fought off the urge to cry, and left in search of his own narrow lonely bed.

* * *

“There is no tropical island, is there, milord?” Bonham asked quietly, in the middle of October. “We’ve all been watching you, this last month. We know what you’re going to do, if this doesn’t work.”

“What I must do,” Dorian answered. “You know your tasks, as well?”

“Yes, milord.” Dorian could read the distance in his retainer’s face and voice, Once, Bonham might have argued, pleaded, fought, tried a few cunning strikes of emotional extortion to keep his beloved lord from folly. But even Bonham seemed to have understood at last – the old Dorian was as dead as the old Klaus.

“Everything stolen by Eroica has been shifted out of your holdings into safe storage,” Bonham recited. “We’ve repainted and papered the walls, to hide places where artwork weathered an outline. James has established hidden accounts for all of us. And on the first day of November, no matter what happens, we’ll stage the – event. Your sister’s son will inherit your estate and become the next Lord Gloria.”

“I never meant to make you commit murder,” said Dorian, thinking of the two Russians in drugged captivity nearby – a dark man and a fair, former KGB doubles of Klaus and himself. NATO’s sedatives had come in handy, after all. Was it murder, when Dorian knew the men were as guilty of abuse as the people already punished? “This isn’t clean justice. It’s wicked. Damn the rules of peerage – “

“I know, milord. It’s easier to fake a murder/suicide than to explain what you’re really after, to the House of Lords. Do you think Lady Barbara can handle the inquiries?”

“She’s been expecting me to off myself over the Major, for years now,” said Dorian dryly. “That was even going to be NATO’s cover story, in case I died during a mission. They gave me enough drugs to do it – I’m certain they’ll all be relieved to think that I used the filthy things! Ah, Bonham. I’m sorry,” he said again. Not because he felt it, but more out of a vague social courtesy he thought he owed an old servant.

“I am too,” said Bonham, mouth set in a white line, and left to attend more of the house-closing duties.

 **Part Four: Heat Beneath Your Winter**

“Hey, James,” Jones called amiably. “Come help us with some of the townhouse stuff, eh? We’ll have a nice night on London, after – “

“‘S okay,” James said, looking down the hall toward Klaus’ suite. Lord Gloria had vanished all day, and Klaus was in one of his restless pacing moods. Without other distraction, those always resulted in amazing bath sessions. “I need to stay – “

“You need to go to London with the lads,” said Bonham quietly, behind him. “Or come with Seth and me to the hunting-lodge.”

James shivered. He knew what waited at the lodge, gagged, bound, and drugged into helplessness. “But I can’t leave – “

“Klaus will be fine. Lord Gloria will be back in time for their evening walk.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” James said, but turned to nod at Jones. “London, if you don’t mind – “

* * *

“Klaus, it’s all right, darling,” Dorian coaxed. “Let’s just go under the trees one more time.”

He’d taken Klaus to the hill every evening for the past week, trying to get him used to the walk and its destination. Klaus still shied from the tangled grove. Or maybe it was the stormclouds brewing overhead, and the dangerous tingle of ions. Strange time for thunderstorms, in fall. Dorian briefly had a dark fantasy of a single lightning-strike killing them both, if the magic brewing in his own body didn’t manage to save them with some fey instinct.

“Klaus,” he tried again. “Come with me.” But Klaus caught at Dorian’s hand, tugged obstinately backwards.

* * *

No. No. Don’t. You never sound happy after we go up there. You don’t laugh, and you don’t touch me. Please. Come home with me. Stay with me now, not just when I’m asleep! If you’re lost, I know how to get back. I know the way, the shapes and smells. I don’t like this place. Can’t you see the shadows moving the wrong way? Oh, please, no –

* * *

“Dammit, Klaus – “ Dorian began, but a white blast interrupted him. Klaus’ gasp was lost in the thunder’s roar. One of the oak trees in the grove shattered into splinters. Klaus grabbed Dorian by the hand, turned, and raced headlong down the hill into a sudden, blinding rain.

How a complete idiot could find his way back across the fields was beyond Dorian. He was too busy cursing Klaus and trying to keep from slipping in mud and leaves. The man’s strong grip never let go of his hand. When Dorian clawed his sodden hair from his face enough to see, he realized they’d almost reached the castle proper.

Klaus looked like a wet dog, earnest and defiant and smugly-pleased at his feat. His clothing plastered to a body returning slowly to its tank physique. Vivid eyes smiled down at Dorian, from behind filthy black bangs. Klaus tugged on his hand again, the contact slippery from mud –

Dorian watched an animal cunning bloom on that beloved face.

“Oh, no,” he said flatly. “Don’t even go there, sweetheart – or I swear I’ll hose you off with cold water from the garden spigot!”

* * *

Not scared anymore! I’m wet. Cold. Mud in my shoes. Mud everywhere. You were with me. I felt your hand in mine. You must be muddy, too.

Hey! I need a bath!

I’m awake. You are here. No one else. You sent them away? You are here. We need a bath. You have to stay with me. Good. Yes?

* * *

“Klaus – no!” Dorian tried to slither away, as six-foot-two of muddy German gathered him into a bear-hug, nuzzling against his neck. It wasn’t fair that Dorian’s knees chose that moment to give out, in a moment of shocked hunger. Klaus fell with him, back into the mud and wet gravel of the courtyard, that hot body instantly blanketing Dorian’s.

“Unnnh!” Flexing magic as well as lithe muscle, Dorian tried to squirm out from under Klaus. “You don’t know what you’re doing! You wouldn’t have chosen this. You ran from it, before,” Dorian sobbed. The most scathing irony of it all: “This is what they taught you to be, a toy. Klaus, no!” A chance hand, flailing out, caught Klaus on the chin and sent him rocking back on his heels. A sculpture of mud-streaked flesh and blazing eyes, even now caught in a pose meant solely to entice –

Just as he’d been trained.

“Stop it!” Dorian screamed at him, standing and grabbing Klaus by the collar of his coat. “Get up!”

He thought rain and tears mixed in the pleading eyes. Klaus leaned into Dorian’s grasp, trying to embrace the blond’s thighs and nuzzle his groin.

“This isn’t you!” Dorian cried out. “It’s just a lie – a slap at NATO, your father, at me.” He forced the man’s head away. Made him stand, held stiffly at arm’s length from Dorian. “You aren’t like this.”

Wordless need and accusation glared back at him, more focused than Dorian had ever seen from this new Klaus.

“I don’t care if that’s what you are now!” Dorian screamed again, heedless of his voice shrilling echoes over the courtyard. “I want my Major back!”

Klaus trembled at that scream. He still fought to touch Dorian, more defiant than afraid.

“All right, then,” Dorian growled. “You’ll have your goddamned bath!”

He keyed down the alarm on the door, set it again after it closed behind them. Hauled his charge, still muddy, down two hallways and into the welcoming, evening-shadowed suite that he’d once created for a brilliant military man.

Not for some brain-damaged slut!

Dorian turned up the lights until they blazed. Klaus winced and blinked. Dorian ran the bath until it sloshed near the rim. Stripped Klaus’ wrecked clothing. Pushed him into the water, when Klaus would have lingered. Slapped a soapy sponge into the man’s hands.

“There!” Dorian said, kicking the chair away from the large tub, and turning away so he couldn’t see. “Clean yourself. Do what you do. Don’t expect me to watch – “ Even under the lamps, fury and magic shone up stronger through the mud and wet grass on Dorian’s own person. Glittering trickles of light pulsed along his hair, sparking off his fingertips.

Klaus merely sat in the tub and stared at Dorian, stubborn rebellion clenching his jaw.

* * *

You can’t leave me. You won’t. I want this. Why don’t you?

I know how to make you stay. I remember trying it, before, when I wanted to sleep forever. They never let me win. You won’t, either. You will touch me!

* * *

Despite his protests, Dorian was watching out of the corner of his eye. Heard Klaus exhale harshly, saw the man wriggle his upper body under water. Washing his hair, Dorian thought.

Until Klaus thrashed in the tub, sending a torrent of soapy water onto the tiled floor.

“DAMN YOU!” Dorian had him out of the water in only a few seconds. After a few quick breaths forced into the fool’s lungs, Dorian flipped Klaus onto his side and let the panicked body spew water and vomit. “I did not save you from NATO’s kindness,” Dorian snarled, beating on Klaus’s back to discharge more water. “I did not slaughter nearly sixty people, or give up my own humanity, just to have you commit suicide on me like some selfish git!”

Klaus curled miserably on the hard floor, filthier than before, his face settling into a familiar distant blankness –

* * *

Hurt. Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t move. Hurt so much. Abandoned again. Not wanted. Useless. Sleep now. Go away from you, from pain, from everything. Never come back. Never wake!

* * *

Dorian slapped him, hard. “No! You won’t go comatose on me, either. If you run away from everything, how can you ever heal?”

Tears spilled from those misty green eyes, as their gaze wavered. Squinted.

Then focused on Dorian.

* * *

Oh! Something new. Not a blur. I understand! Parts I see now – eyes and nose, lips and chin and hair. Your face. Your body –

I can see you! I know what it means, the way your face moves. So beautiful. So angry. You hurt me. You hate me. You do not want me. I don’t know why. I want you. You’re all I want. If I can’t make you stay, then I want – nothing.

I want to sleep.

* * *

That scalding clarity receded like water draining into sand. The eyes closed, stubbornly immune to any amount of shaking and shouting.

It was easier cleaning the slack body when it didn’t fight him. Its arousal was instinctive as ever, as easily ignored. Dorian sluiced out the mouth – in a little while, it wouldn’t matter, but he didn’t want Klaus’ teeth and gums hurt in the interim by stomach acids. Dorian eyed the blanket-pile sourly, then the vast bed. The pillow-corner was easier to reach, so he dragged Klaus there.

The bathroom lamps set a knife-edged bar of light across the carpeted floor; that and Dorian himself were the only illumination.

He needed a bath even more now, and a fresh set of the pure linen garments Therese had made. Dorian’s hands tingled, wherever they’d long been in contact with Klaus’ flesh. A vague enough sensation to be pleasant, still. Dorian guessed that in a week it could become painful: the touch of iron in mortal blood.

How had she borne it for fourteen years, that Sidhe ancestress?

If Dorian wanted any chance of Klaus following him on Samhain Night, he’d better find ways of inducing more anemia now. Change the diet, even if it starved Klaus during these last days. Drugs. Hell, perhaps even leeches. Anything that would give Klaus a better chance at the only sure healing –

Dorian stopped in the middle of those grim thoughts, staring down at the man he’d rescued and then virtuously-ignored.

Wait. He just tried to kill himself, to make me stay, Dorian thought. And I think he actually saw me, just now.

The horror of it was almost more breathtaking than knowing what Klaus had already been through. What if the man’s mind, free from NATO’s drugs and the Russians’ tender care, was healing on its own?

“Oh, my love,” Dorian whispered, stricken as he sank down to kneel by Klaus. “You’ve been fighting your way back, all along? Only it’s so slow, and none of us really saw it. I – “

Didn’t have reject mortality in favour of Sidhe power, or make the bargain that must take him outside the world in less than two weeks. Shouldn’t have chosen a path that might leave Klaus alone and defenseless yet again –

 _I didn’t know._

Dorian discovered that he could still cry. The hot luminous tears fell on the blankets, the pillows, on Klaus’ clean skin.

 _I thought you were gone forever._

* * *

Your scent just changed. Not angry. You are crying. I make you sad? I don’t want that –

* * *

Klaus moved, eyes flickering sleepily open, tongue tasting one teardrop that had just landed on his lips. Dorian couldn’t move away from that clear, steady gaze, or the arm that drew him down into the blankets. A warm, shockingly-skilled mouth kissed away the rest of his tears. The naked body wriggled against his, their sudden erections meeting in friction barely blunted by Dorian’s clothing. Klaus tumbled them both sideways in the pillows.

“Klaus, no,” Dorian moaned, as nimble hands opened his shirt, pulled down his drawstring slacks. “This is wrong. You don’t have to – “

* * *

I can see your face now. Everything you think and feel is there. I just have to learn what it means, your sadness. How can I make it go away?

You don’t hate me.

You are unhappy because I make you think of bad things. Are they the things I can barely remember? Bad tastes. Bad smells. Noises that hurt. Pain. Confusion. Terror. Pleasure, inflicted over and over until it became pain.

How do you know?

Were you there?

Did _you_ hurt me, too?

* * *

A careful hand cupped Dorian’s face, a thumb registering the movements of Dorian’s speaking lips. Klaus leaned over him, merely looking for the longest time. His expression made Dorian want to cry again. Not bewildered victim or sulky vixen – but sharp and searching, almost suspicious. Almost the Major.

That dark head leaned close, to breathe deeply against Dorian’s neck and chest.

 _He’s scenting me,_ Dorian realized. _All those months, not being able to understand what he was seeing or hearing. This is the only way he knows us from each other. How feral. How dangerous – and alluring –_

Another sniff, this time open-mouthed, with strong teeth just grazing the soft skin of Dorian’s throat. Tasting –

He remembered the blond Russian he’d kidnapped right out of a Norwegian jail only a few weeks before, and the scenes on a DVD locked in a safe off-limits even in a house of thieves.

 _Oh, god. He remembers – something._

Dorian recalled his own shock and guilty arousal, watching an unfamiliar Klaus with pearls and orange-blossoms braided into his long black hair, vacant eyes and cheeks enhanced with subtle make-up, a shimmering red gloss on his lips. A Klaus on his hands and knees, arching into the thrusts of –

– Of a man who looked similar enough to Dorian to be another outrage, from the golden curls to the too-pretty face. But this one’s eyes were grey and cruel. Their bodies ground together on a padded and flower-strewn stage. An audio feed picked up the fast, complicated tempo of some German techno music, and the applause and drunken whoops from an unseen audience. They’d been calling out suggestions. And prices. Dorian could not shake the image of it – the smug pleasure on his double’s face, the man smiling directly into the camera as he emptied himself with three pulsing thrusts. And Klaus’ mindless need and completion, when his rapist leaned over and tenderly fondled him into a spurting climax over the flowers –

 _No. Please – no! Don’t react, think of anything – fuck it, think of women!_

But all he could think of was Klaus, coming.

* * *

Bright lights. Yellow hair. Flowers and musk. I’ve smelled that before, and it meant pain and pleasure, but no joy. It wasn’t the right musk, or the right flowers.

Not you.

You always smell of – comfort and peace, even when you’re sad.

And now you smell like you want me.

* * *

Klaus gave him one of those dazzling smiles, sighing when Dorian couldn’t help smiling back. Then he swept an emphatic hand down between their bodies, to gather both their erections together.

“Ohhh,” Dorian whispered.

Klaus kissed him.

* * *

I don’t hurt, now. You don’t have to hurt, for me. I’m not afraid. I’m here with you. I know how to do this, to bring you joy. To take joy with you. Does it matter anymore, where and how I learned? As long as I can do it with you – it’s good.

* * *

“Ah, darling, please – “ Dorian writhed as Klaus kissed him from neck to nipple, and down past his belly.

Too good! Too perfect, hotter than any of his fantasies about the Major. That agile tongue laved the head of Dorian’s penis, almost shyly, and Dorian couldn’t keep from bucking upwards into the hot insistent suction. Klaus’ pace was not decadently-slow or staged – but fierce and urgent and honest. It was impossible not to respond in kind, to thrust only a few more times and erupt into that unbelievable mouth.

Still kneeling between Dorian’s legs, Klaus bent his head and spat easily into his hand. Then the alert gaze found Dorian’s face again. Waiting for guidance. For commands.

 _No,_ Dorian thought. _Not that._ He wanted it – god, yes! – but more than anything else he wanted Klaus to know equality and trust. There was one gift Dorian could return, something that the enslaved man had not been often allowed –

Dorian flexed his body, bringing his knees up and back. Opening himself. To Klaus’s silent confusion, he smiled assurance, then helped guide that seed-slick hand to his cleft.

The fingers touched him. Klaus’ eyes widened. He burrowed closer, mouth trailing down Dorian’s penis, sac, and perineum toward –

Dorian lay absolutely still, frozen in disbelief and wretched pleasure. Delicate wet probing circled his tight ring of flesh, so light and warm it held little more than the pressure of a breath. He couldn’t help moaning. Klaus must have taken that for approval, for in the next instant the soft tongue furled itself to velvet hardness. It breached Dorian’s defenses, striking deep –

“Klaus, _no!”_

That wonderful, horrible presence withdrew. Its instigator looked confused and impatient.

Dorian managed a shaky laugh. “No, no, it’s all right,” he soothed, petting the other man’s hair. “You’re amazing, but that’s not what I want. Not yet. Here, use your fingers.” He caught them, guided them back again.

From their skill, Dorian guessed those fingers knew how to prepare their owner. He didn’t think about that, only reveled in the slick caresses deep inside him. Groaning when they rubbed the hidden knot of nerves, and made his body arch up. Klaus seemed to learn from his lover’s pleasured cries, if not Dorian’s actual words, and concentrated on that spot.

No! Too much, too soon. Dorian shuddered, trying to slow the dizzy cadence. But there was no going back from this. Too much need, too much lost time!

“Klaus, I want you – “ He groped at slim hips, tugged them toward him. Klaus needed no more urging to rear up, then sink upon and into Dorian. The feel of him was incredible. Even better was the softly-melting hunger in Klaus’ eyes, as Dorian clenched around him.

Their coupling became sweaty, frantic, without finesse and impelled by mirrored desperation. Klaus’ powerful thrusts lifted Dorian from the pillows. Dorian wrapped his legs around his lover’s hips, aiding the pace, sobbing out both his joy and shame. Klaus seemed to feel nothing of the latter; his own features were transfigured by sheer delight.

And release! Eyes wide, face set in a stunned look of discovery, Klaus drove in as far as Dorian could take him. Heat pulsed and fluttered deep inside the blond, a warm flood that swept his own orgasm from him in a thrashing volley of soft cries and aftershocks.

“Oh, my love,” Dorian whispered after he could breathe again, unable to keep the tears from leaking out of his eyes again.

Klaus kissed them away once more. Cuddled close, with one arm flung over Dorian’s chest. In ten heartbeats, the man was bonelessly asleep.

His peace found its way to Dorian, after a few more minutes.

The unthinkable, the unspeakable had happened. But Klaus had decided, chosen, consented. Even if it was in a way that no human court could understand or condone. Dorian sighed, nestling against the other man’s warmth.

He couldn’t pretend anymore that this was his skittishly-repressed Major. That man was gone, and probably for the best. He’d been remade as a creature fresh from Eden, all innocent joy and potential.

And one way or another, the world would lose him again, on Samhain Night.

* * *

Wake. Warm. Relaxed. Not hungry, not thisty, don’t need to piss or shit. Just rest, eyes closed, breathing the scents of flowers, musk – and joy.

You’re still here. Am I dreaming?

Move, still sleepy. No dream. Pull you closer, kiss your neck. You’re here, real and warm. Asleep. I want to touch more of you. I don’t want to wake you. So I watch.

You are too beautiful. I shiver when I look too long. I have to look away. At a space bounded by six flats. I – we – are inside it. The space is lit by sun, filled with other things I don’t recognize. I know their smell, the way they feel, what they do. Things for light when it’s dark, things that cover my body, things that make wonderful sounds, things to sit upon. Many things I’m afraid to touch. A large soft thing that I can’t look at, without dimly remembering the wrong kind of pleasure. It’s better here, in the corner between flats. Can’t fall, here. Can’t be tied, or hurt –

Need you. Need to change hurt into joy.

Touch you, at the place where your pleasure sleeps. Ah – that part of you wakes. Moves in my hand. Asks for joy – how can I not answer?

* * *

Dorian woke from dreams of lust to the real thing, his hips rocking as Klaus suckled at his penis. Dorian gasped, as much for the untrammeled eroticism of that sight as for the physical sensation.

Green eyes opened, veiled in black lashes and hair. Skin crinkled at the corners of those eyes. Cheek muscles twitched in a grin. And the tongue still swirled playfully around him.

“Good – good morning to you, too,” Dorian whispered, stretching his arms. Spine, hips, and legs were already weak with pleasure. “Oh, lover, you really don’t have to–”

Oh, my. He apparently did, and he wasn’t taking ‘no’ for an answer. Hands gripped Dorian’s pelvis, pinning him as that hot mouth slid deeper over him. Not as urgent as last night, but as impossible to resist.

Dorian had wanted this wonderful man for so many years, been rebuffed and insulted, cursed at and struck. Oh, damn the Russians for making this happen! For freeing Klaus from his own past and his demons in such horrible ways. Dorian was wildly-glad he’d got his revenge before Klaus began to wake up. It would have been even more sadistic, now – out of jealousy. The tiniest ghost of a wicked voice, inside Dorian, whispered that he should have been the one to do it. To bind and drug, just enough to gentle that fierce spirit – never destroy it. To seduce without harm or pain or shame. To restore Klaus back to NATO and his family outwardly unchanged, with the promise of future trysts a delicious secret between the two men. Klaus’ virginity, both body and mind, should have fallen to no one else!

Klaus pulled back from him without warning. Stared down at Dorian with grinning finality, as if some decision had been considered, and approved.

“What?” Dorian asked.

That pale body turned away from him in the pile of blankets and pillows. Silver-dappled skin flexed, as Klaus looked back over his shoulder. His right knee raised a little in silent invitation. To make it obvious, he completed the turn, ending with his legs spread and hips raised on one larger cushion.

Dorian’s mouth went dry. He couldn’t have said anything; words were useless, anyway. Klaus knew what he was thinking, the needs telegraphed by infallible clues of scent and arousal. And if Klaus approved –

The thief spooned up against his mute, welcoming lover.

* * *

No. Don’t get up. You don’t have to go to the bathroom for soap to slick me. I don’t want to lose any part of your touch.

Warm licking, soft and gentle. Ohhh. Did it feel this way, for you, when I did it to you last night? So good. Must be because it’s you doing it to me. I feel empty, even when your tongue is there and your fingers here. Please – fill me. Move inside me. Make that part of me yours, too. So that nothing else remains but what we do together, right now.

So that when I remember – I will remember only you!

* * *

Months of healing had left Klaus tight, even with the careful stretching Dorian had lavished upon him before entry. One could almost believe –

But no, this was no untried virgin. Klaus bucked expertly back onto Dorian’s shaft, taking it in one thrust. His passage rippled on the upstroke, increasing pleasure. When Dorian shifted his angle to find the other man’s nub, Klaus rewarded him with fast breathing and shudders.

I want to see your face when I make you come, Dorian thought savagely. He pulled out, flipped Klaus over, didn’t cringe when the long legs draped obediently over his shoulders. Re-entry was silk and fire, spiced with the mingled scents of sex, sweat, and the autumn leaves still caught in Dorian’s hair.

Klaus’ face was as enticing as his body. Eyes soft, yet challenging. Breath coming faster and faster. The pearl-white teeth reddening his lower lip were, by themselves, a study in elegant debauchery.

 _Is this you?_ Dorian almost screamed at his gracefully undulating lover. _What you were really like under the ice, all along? What I could have had, if you hadn’t been so damned stubborn and scared?_

Klaus read the accusation in his face. Laughed silently at how silly it was. Stretched, arms entangled over his head, eyes dancing in a way that said _For you, I am anything–_

* * *

– Anything! Whatever you want, I can be. But you have to be everything I want. Warm arms to hold me when I’m sad or scared. Someone who can leave me alone, when I need that. Someone who gives me choices. Be patient with me. Teach me. Love me!

* * *

Dorian was so close to the edge he never heard the bedroom door open, or the swiftly-stilled gasp from two new voices. Neither did his lover, straining upward in the blind moments before sensation overtook them both.

* * *

James shut the door, quietly, shaking as Jones turned him around and marched them both down the hall.

It was impossible. Disgusting. Fucking unfair, the way Lord Gloria had threatened them all with that horrible knife – and then did it, himself. It was –

“About goddamn time,” murmured Jones.

James snarled. “How can you – “

“It may not be what you think. Bonham knew. He’s been watching Klaus, the last few weeks. The man’s been – waking up, is the best word for it. But even you’ve seen how unhappy he is, when Lord Gloria isn’t with him.”

“That was rape.”

“Because you didn’t get your chance at him, first?” Jones laughed at James’ sudden consternation. “He’s a fine sight in the bath, I’ll tell you – but he’s Eroica’s man. Always has been, I think. We’ll confront them at breakfast. And ask.”

“Lord Gloria will only lie to us.”

Jones grinned coldly. “Maybe. But I don’t think he can lie to Klaus.”

* * *

Clean, hair washed, haphazardly-clad, and hungry, the lovers eventually wandered toward the kitchen. It was an intermittent route. Klaus kept getting sidetracked by the apparently-wondrous things he could now distinguish. Hall lamps, carpet patterns, the grain of wood and marble, fine details of art and sculpture. And Dorian, of course. Klaus could not resist stopping every now and then, and simply staring at the fey thief. Playing with his drying hair, and stepping forward to kiss him again and again.

Dorian was dizzy by the time they found the kitchen. He noticed smells of frying egg and bacon, but they didn’t impinge properly. After all, his people had seen him on mornings-after for years. It simply wasn’t that strange, to be hanging onto a lover’s arm and half-tripping through the door –

James’ one-eyed glare pulled him up short. The little accountant was fully-dressed – in steeltoed boots and blue work overalls, not one of his patchwork suits. He looked tired. And outraged.

“James, dear?” Dorian began.

James tossed his head, the dark brown curls slithering back and forth across his brow and eyes. “You’re a piece of work, you are! How could you?”

“Er – “ It was very hard to think, with Klaus pressed shamelessly close and nibbling on his neck.

Dorian’s second lieutenant looked up from unloading a platter of scrambled eggs with bacon crumbles at the table. The tall, thin-faced thief wore the same type of overalls, and Dorian remembered something about the gang infiltrating a warehouse. “Tripped you right and proper, did he, milord?” asked Jones neutrally.

“Twice,” said Dorian, unable to keep from blushing. “He – “

“He’s still enough of the Major for that – once he’s set on something, nobody’s going to keep him from it.” The look Jones gave the two of them was paternal, and pitying. “I’d say it’s been overdue.”

“Hmph!” said James, frozen in the act of grabbing a plate and scooping up some eggs. “You’ll have no trouble leading him up that nasty hill now, Lord Gloria. He’ll go like a lamb. He loves you.”

Klaus had been looking around the room with his new fierce focus, head up, nostrils widening at the scent of food. Abandoning Dorian suddenly, he stalked forward to the table. Reached out with thumb and index finger, to grab a bit of egg. Looked at it carefully. And the way he ate it, swallowed and then licked his fingers –

Was probably illegal, Dorian thought, watching Jones blink and James turn white. That all-consuming bliss and joy in the moment was just too much to believe.

James turned away from the table, hands shaking on his plate.

Klaus jumped back, like a startled cat, and put himself instantly between James and Dorian.

Silent, his lips were still twisted in a warning snarl.

* * *

I can see now. But smell shows me where to turn, to reach. So hungry. Tastes good. Feels good. My beautiful shining golden one is here, and other voices and scents I know.

Something moves.

Something new!

Protect!

* * *

“James,” Dorian said in a low, calm voice. “Don’t move.”

Klaus’ feral gaze tracked warily over James. He sniffed, closing the distance between them.

“He only knows us by scent,” Dorian said, “He couldn’t process what he saw, for so long. I don’t think he can hear coherently yet – but he’s seeing now.”

“My lord?” James quavered, as Klaus leaned over to sniff lightly at his hair, face, and exposed throat.

“Be still.”

Then Klaus smiled, one of those stunning grins more potent than any legendary aphrodisiac. One of his hands brushed the curtaining hair from James’ upturned face.

Dorian braced himself against a surge of jealousy, knowing what was coming next. _He’s mine!_ he thought – then forced his anger to silence. _I’m the one who gave Klaus choices again. And we’ve never been stodgy about whom we loved, in this house. Or where!_

James’ bewildered noise was silenced, when Klaus gathered him close and kissed him.

* * *

I know you! Not my golden one, no. But someone who hurt me once, and felt sad about it after. You never hurt me again. Taught me games with my hands, things to feel even if I couldn’t see them. You fed me and gave me baths. Shared joy. Held me when I was afraid and lonely. I like you.

I trust you.

I think – yes, your scent says you like me, too.

Food can wait. I know a wonderful game –

* * *

“My lord!” James squeaked when Klaus grabbed his hand and started toward the hallway.

Jones, damn him, sagged into a chair and started laughing weakly.

“You’re not helping,” Dorian hissed, and launched himself in front of Klaus. “Where do you think you’re going, my lovelies?”

And was derailed totally by another of those smiles, as Klaus’ free hand snaked out to claim Dorian’s, too.

Jones’ chuckles followed them into Klaus’ suite, until Dorian slammed the door with a kick.

“L – Lord Gloria?” James gasped. Klaus had let go of them both, but only to find the zipper of the smaller man’s coveralls.

“Easy,” Dorian soothed, embracing James from behind, holding him as both coveralls and skivvies were peeled down. Klaus puzzled over the boots, but managed to slide them off. There really was no point in arguing with Klaus about social niceties that Dorian himself had never much use for! And the idea that Klaus was aroused by this, that he wanted James – not the miserly accountant but the pocket-sized Adonis that few people ever even noticed – that was strangely appealing. “James, my darling,” Dorian purred, “do you want us?”

“Oh, god, yes!”

“Then hush. No more words. ‘S not polite.”

* * *

It begins like the bath, but without water. You sit in front of me, our legs crossed, knees touching. Your head leans against my chest. I love the noises you make when I touch you, the way I touch myself in the bath. You are small there, too, but just right in my hands.

Touch me back? Yes – let my golden one show you how. It’s easy. Slick pressure. Warm. Wet from spit, from leaking pleasure. Rubbing down, then up, then squeezing.

Ah, yes. So good!

I can’t make your noises. I can’t understand them, when they stop being simple. But I know what your body wants, what your scent and face ask for.

Our golden one helps me rise up on my knees, bend down. I blow warm breath over you, and smile when you tumble backward. Your hips begin to move as I taste you.

I feel hands on my own hips. Wet stroking down my back, up between my legs. I spread my knees. I’m already stretched open, already slick. There is no pain, when one finger dips inside me. Then another, feeling for that one certain place –

Yes!

I want more. I want to feel hard flesh plunging into me, while I kiss and suck. I want us to reach joy together, my dark and golden ones –

My lovers!

* * *

 **Part Five: Shadows Turning Red**

Dorian left them sleeping on the big bed, nestled together like kittens. As he wrapped a bathrobe around himself, he spared a glance back at the two men. Dark heads, one black, one brown, shared the same pillow. The dreaming faces half-visible under their hair seemed relaxed, shameless, and innocent.

He’s like a drug, Dorian thought. Once tasted, irresistible. Should I feel guilty, for James’ sake? After all, if Klaus cannot follow me into Faerie – Dorian paused in the bedroom doorway, a great weight suddenly lifting from his mind. James will want to keep him, to care for him. Is that too much to ask, from my people? Because there’s no one else. I can’t let Klaus go back into a sanitarium – three months with NATO hurt him almost worse than the Russians did. But I don’t – I don’t want to kill him!

James was clever and resourceful – all Eroica’s thieves were. And Klaus was well on his way to charming them all.

I could go happily to Faerie without him, Dorian decided, if I know he will be safe.

* * *

Bonham was back, with Seth. Others had surfaced from their errands, were now moving quietly about the echoing castle. Other than a knowing look or two, his people left Dorian alone all that morning.

Dorian stood on a landing halfway above the Great Hall, looking at legitimate treasures of the Gloria estate: a Saxon helm and mail-coat, lovingly-displayed on a stand. The tapestries showing the defeat of the Spanish Armada, given along with a lord’s title to one Master Benedict from Her Majesty Elizabeth I. Some Constable paintings, a nice little Cellini bronze of Orpheus, several Ming vases, the obligatory Rococco silverware. Other places in the ancestral castle gleamed with similar spare beauties. It was nothing to the crowded profusion of Eroica’s heyday, when the place had been stuffed with millions of pounds’ worth of liberated artwork. Some of that hidden fortune would be sold in secret, in a few years, to help keep his thieves reformed and out of the Yard’s notice. The bulk of the pieces would be eventually returned, untraceably, to the fools he’d stolen them from.

Eroica’s last grand beau geste, one of sly charity rather than defeated surrender: From Eroica, with love – so kind of you to let me borrow these! The Yard and Interpol would never catch him. He would pass from the world, into legend.

With a start, Dorian realized the date was the 20th of October. The castle, estates, and title were all swept clean now, ready for Lady Barbara and her five-year-old son.

Somewhere off the Hall, in the library, a telephone rang. Dorian heard Bonham’s good-natured grumbling, as the older thief ran to answer it.

The magic in Dorian’s blood roused, feeling something change. The silence in the house went from drowsy to alert, in a single heartbeat.

He was ready, when Bonham’s voice called up, too steadily: “Milord Gloria? You’ll want to take this – “

* * *

“Russell, darling,” Dorian said with as much boredom as he could muster. “How’s my favourite gossip rag doing?”

“As well as could be expected, Lord Gloria – considering that no one could replace Diana for photo-ops, that prat Blair still thinks ‘Cool Brittania’ is a good idea, and you haven’t been spotted prancing around town in bloody ages.”

“I’ve been busy,” said Dorian.

“Got a new honey tucked away in that drafty old castle, have we? Someone better than all the creampuffs in the clubs? Someone you’ve chased for years, maybe, and finally caught?”

“Russell, I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re blathering about. Either spit it out, or swallow. What do you want?”

“There’ve been some rumours of odd lights out in the Gloria park, of evenings. I came up yesterday with a nightscope, a telephoto lens, and my Wellies, to see if it was those silly neopagans again. And – “ the man’s drawl oozed smugness. “I didn’t see any dancing Wiccans or low-flying UFO’s. But I did see you running back through the rain with a man who looked remarkably like Major Klaus Heinz von dem Eberbach, of NATO. Only, isn’t he supposed to be dead?”

“Interesting delusions, Russell. You certain you didn’t catch a cold in the rain?”

“No. ‘Coz I got some nice pictures of you both in that courtyard. Was he proposing? NATO says he’s dead, and won’t elaborate. His father, the Graf von dem Eberbach, said to talk to you.”

“Fuck you, Russell.”

“I believe we have, Dorian – you broke my heart over some German bastard in the late seventies, remember?”

“What do you want?”

“An exclusive. The two of you. I’m not looking at something smarmy and low-brow. I think it’s terribly romantic – the spybuster running away with a fluffy earl to some love-nest, after all these years. Happy-ever-after, eh?”

“It’s not what you think it is.”

“Then tell me what it is! We’ll be good. Remember, it was the Mirror that offered to print Elton John’s coming-out statements, before the stuffier rags dragged him in the mud. And we’ve always loved your antics. What’s the real story, here?”

Dorian sighed. “You won’t go away, will you?”

“Not a chance,” Russell said cheerfully.

There was an opportunity for more revenge here, for making certain that no one would want to bother Klaus again. And Dorian could use Russell’s curiosity for his own plots. It wouldn’t be kind – but what about this mess had ever been kind?

“Tomorrow morning at eleven,” Dorian said. “You’ll have your interview, on two conditions.”

“Name ‘em, darling.”

“You bring your own camera – no one else but you. And you don’t print the thing until November 1st.”

“Running away again?”

“I’ve a friend in Polynesia who wants to put us up for the winter, and I don’t want a lot of ruckus on the way to the plane.”

“Done deal, your Lordship – you’re always such a pleasure to work with.”

“Goodbye, Russell,” Dorian snarled, and hung up.

* * *

Seen in person, the small, spry reporter was nothing like the redheaded, dewy young journalist Dorian remembered romancing so long ago. The man’s eyes were sharp, the lines on his face adding a ruggedness not terribly diminished by his bald spot.

He waited in the parlour, pacing with visible impatience and looking around the sparsely-decorated room. He heard footsteps and turned eagerly, saying: “Funny. I’ve always heard how this place looked like a plum Roadshow derailed inside it – “ his voice faltered, as Dorian paused in the doorway.

Silently. Effectively. Seeing for the first time what frighteningly-truthful mirrors mortal eyes were, as they reflected back what he’d become.

Russell shook his head, trying to clear away the glamour. “Jesus, Dorian, you look more beautiful than ever. ‘S not fair.”

“Just clean living and true love,” Dorian said, gesturing to a chair, a sofa, and a table set with a tea service. “Sit down, and we’ll talk.”

Russell took the chair. Began tweaking settings on his digital camera, and checking light levels in the room. “Where’s the Major?”

“Dead, for nearly three years,” said Dorian.

Russell sputtered. “But I saw – “

“James?” Dorian called, “bring him in, if you please.”

The Earl’s infamous little accountant, armoured in one of his legendary patchwork suits, peeked around the door. Then walked forward, holding another man’s hand. Leading him.

Klaus stopped in the doorway, staring warily at the reporter. Dorian stood up, walked over, and coaxed him forward again. “It’s all right, Klaus. You don’t know him. But he won’t hurt you. He wants to help you, and me. It’s all right. Sit down with me?”

Russell looked at the casual, soft clothing. The hesitant way the man moved, eyes on the reporter at all times. How Klaus settled on the edge of the sofa, wedged between Dorian and the accountant. Well, Russell could understand the man being nervous. Coming out was rarely easy, especially in so public a way! “Interview with Lord Dorian Red Gloria and Herr Major Klaus Heinz von dem Eberbach, time ten minutes after eleven, 21st October, at Castle Gloria,” Russell began, switching on a small recorder. “Good morning, Herr von dem Eberbach. How are you doing, today?”

“Save it,” hissed the accountant. “He can’t understand you, and he couldn’t answer you if he did.”

Dorian lifted away the scarf wrapping Klaus’s throat. Opened Klaus’ shirt, moved it far enough to one side to reveal the white dots on the man’s shoulders. “Here – these scars on his throat? His vocal cords were removed, to keep him quiet. And these are cigarette burns. I’ve counted at least two hundred of them on his back and shoulders. He has other scars, but nothing like the ones in his brain. Believe me, when I say the Major is dead.”

“What the hell happened?”

“He was caught by the Russians on his last mission,” said Dorian, placing a stoneware mug of lukewarm tea in Klaus’ hands. The man eased off his vigilant stare long enough to sip, calmed by the familiar ritual of tea. “NATO, by his own consent, had already given him a drug that would prevent the Russians from interrogating him. Unfortunately, it destroyed his mind.”

“Good god. Shouldn’t he be in sanitarium? NATO – “

“NATO wanted to euthanize him and dissect his brain. His father gave me legal guardianship. I thought Klaus deserved to live – he’s healed a lot since we brought him here. Maybe, with time and care, more of him will come back – “

Russell’s lips set grimly. “Are you fucking him?”

The accountant made an indignant noise. Dorian leaned across the oblivious Klaus, and smacked James on the arm. Then, lazily: “Yes, I am. But I swear to you, Russell, I didn’t start it. I had to let him heal, and decide what he wanted.”

“He’s a moron. He can’t decide. He probably doesn’t even know what sex is, and you’re – “

“He knows,” Dorian said flatly. “The Russians kept him for two years, as a secret trophy and slave. Would you like to see why I didn’t touch him first?” He punched some buttons on a remote control, and wallpapered panels opened to reveal a flatscreen television. “James, get Klaus out of here. Neither of you should see this.”

“Yes, my lord.” James hauled away his charge, a tugboat leading away a stately tall-ship. As the door closed behind them, Russell heard the accountant chattering happily to the mute man.

Dorian pressed another button on the remote.

And Russell sat back, stunned at what commenced.

He couldn’t watch it all the way, not when he realized the stage-show had been advertisement, and that large amounts of money were now being offered in spirited bidding. “Turn it off – “ said the reporter.

“There’s more,” offered Dorian. “His owner seemed to like renting him out for theme parties – “

“Turn it off! That was obscene!”

“Yes, it was. They killed a warrior’s mind, and turned his defenseless body into a whore. Sex, he knows very well. The NATO doctors and section chiefs were so embarrassed they didn’t even try to heal him, just kept him drugged and tied down. But believe me – there’s a brain waking up, in there. It knows what it wants – the bastard managed to trip me! It’s because I love him – even now,” Dorian sighed miserably. “He’s so innocent in spite of everything, and so beautiful. And he loves me, in his own way. If anybody took him away, I think he might realize it and be hurt.”

“You know this is going to be a huge scandal, if I print this,” Russell asked. “I’m fond of you, Lord Gloria. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Run the story, after we leave for points oceanic,” Dorian insisted. “Hell, you can have the DVD for proof – I don’t want it. I’m not coming back to Britain – my sister’s son can have the title. And the authorities don’t stand a chance of catching me – or making anything stick if they do.”

Russell looked around at the parlour. “In spite of the careful redecorating, I’d say you’ve sold off a lot of assets in the last few months. Is his care so expensive?”

“Not really – “ said Dorian, then froze as he glared back. It was a fine glare, judged to the edge of sincere fury. “Goddammit, Russell, you are too good at this!”

“Those people on the DVD – I recognize some of their faces,” Russell began. “They were important. And they’re all dead. A mysterious assassination squad ripped through Russia a few months ago.”

“Really?” asked Dorian.

“That would have been an expensive campaign to organize and fund.”

“I’m sure.”

“Nearly sixty people dead in less than three days. No one could figure out what the victims had in common. I mean, ex-KGB generals and Russian Mafia-types practically have bullseyes painted on their backs, these days. But who wanted to rub out socialites, resort workers, audio-visual professionals, too? All of them with throats cut in one stroke. Very surgical. No one saw a thing, until the bodies were discovered. No alarms, no video, no living witnesses. It had to be a large, well-co-ordinated group.”

Dorian smiled. “Then I owe them a debt, whoever they were.”

“I don’t think you owe them anything, Lord Gloria. I think you’ve already paid them off, and gutted your estate to do it.”

“I’ve never been a killer, Russell,” Dorian said, fluttering his eyelashes.

“But you have friends in the business – come on, we know about that Italian don who still lusts after you. Did you fund the Russian assassinations?”

“I will neither confirm – “ Dorian sipped his own tea calmly “ – nor deny anything.”

“Is revenge worth it?”

A look of intense loss and pain crossed the beautiful face. “No. You have no idea, Russell. Whatever you think I spent on whatever sick and savage revenge-plot – nothing can change the fact that my Major is dead and gone. Someone new is living inside his skull. You think he’s mute and helpless? He speaks with every line of his body. And he could charm anybody with one smile. I don’t know who he is. But I want to have a few years of peace and quiet to learn.”

“I’ll print it, right up to this tape,” Russell warned, “and you’d better run fast. Because a lot of people aren’t going to understand and accept the excuse of ‘true love.’”

“And you, old friend?” asked Dorian, standing up and holding out his hands. “Do you?”

Russell clasped them, shivering at the thrill of touching something so lovely it should have been unreal. “This is so close as makes no difference. Good luck to you both. If I showed up on Tahiti, Fiji, or Ponape in a few months, could I stop by and see how you’re doing?”

Dorian smiled wearily, and the reporter suddenly guessed at another truth waiting behind the earl’s lies. “I doubt it,” said Dorian, with an offhand shrug. “We’ll have moved on, by then.”

“Then it’s been good seeing you again, my friend,” said Russell, squeezing Dorian’s hands. “I hope – I hope you find your peace.”

* * *

“Did he buy it, Lord Gloria?” asked Bonham, after the reporter’s little electric car buzzed away down the lane.

“Oh, yes,” said Dorian.

“He believes you’ll kill Klaus, then suicide?”

“I’m sure of it.”

“Why are we allowing this delusion?”

“Because it helps protect you lads from the inevitable investigation. If there’s already hints of suicide pacts, the inspectors won’t think so much about you murdering me for my money. All you have to do is stand fast and look honest – don’t cut and run.”

“And your Russell won’t scream to the authorities, to stop you?”

Dorian sighed. “He lost the love of his life to AIDS five years ago. The man went slowly – Russell didn’t have power-of-attorney, and his lover’s family just let the poor soul wither in a cheap hospice. He’s seen a little of what happened to Klaus. Out of kindness, he won’t stop us.”

“Are you going to kill Klaus, if you can’t take him with you?” Bonham pressed, watching the tall man awkwardly playing with a kite outside, as James helped. “We’re fond of him, you see.”

“I was hoping you’d all take him in,” said Dorian softly. “He’s just starting to wake up. I don’t know how much more he can achieve, or how long he’ll live – but it seems wasteful to deprive him of any more life. Will you do it?”

“He’ll be safe and happy with us, Lord Gloria.”

 **Part Six: The Lights of Hope**

The last night, Dorian didn’t sleep at all. He watched James cuddled asleep against Klaus, for an hour or two. They’d been absurdly delighted with each other, in the previous week. There had been games and silent laughter, fond smiles from the older thieves. So far, Klaus hadn’t ‘chosen’ anyone besides Dorian or James – but Dorian thought that further experiments might not be too far in the future.

Klaus would never lack protectors, and Dorian was serene in his own decisions.

He himself hadn’t physically touched Klaus since three days ago. When his dark-haired love spread warm fingers across Dorian’s bare forearm, in a don’t-walk-so-fast gesture out in the garden – and Dorian had yelped at the burn. He remembered Klaus’ intent stare at the red, slowly-fading handprint on Dorian’s skin.

Then the beautiful grey-green eyes had lifted to look at him. Klaus understood pain and its causes; he’d smiled sadly, backed off, and shook his head. When James had careened around a corner some minutes later, Klaus stopped him from touching Dorian. With feral genius, Klaus had nosed through Dorian’s clothes closets, eventually presenting him with a pair of long silk-knit evening gloves. He’d held Dorian’s hand possessively after that, all evening, but never again pressed for a kiss or other bare-skinned contact.

I don’t belong here, anymore, Dorian thought now, watching his untouchable lovers.

In a tower attic far enough away from his retainers’ rooms, Dorian spent the rest of the night sharpening his titanium dagger. Without a microscope, he couldn’t be sure of his skills. At dawn, squinting thoughtfully down the blade, he thought that every metallic crystal was lined up with its neighbor in an uncanny edge. Even the air molecules drifting against it would dull the dagger slightly – but that wicked edge only needed to last until the next night.

I can’t stay. But I’m not leaving this world, unless Klaus can come with me!

* * *

“Come on, darling,” Dorian coaxed, his feet already on the path up the hill. “It will be all right, just come with me. We do this every night. It’s just a walk.”

Klaus paused, as usual, and stared up at the oak grove with a doubtful look on his face. He obviously didn’t like it. But the walk had become habit, just as wearing the plaited-rush sandals and the drawstring linen trousers. The chill October air sent goosebumps across his bare upper body and arms, but he didn’t seem to mind the cold.

“Walk with me?” Dorian asked again, dropping his silk-shielded grip on Klaus’ hand and stepping away.

Dorian watched Klaus waver, in a moment of doubt and vague fear. Then the man grinned, stepped forward, and caught up Dorian’s hand again.

A waxing moon gave them light enough to see by. The evening was still and quiet – no raucous neopagan bonfires nearby, no harvest parties or bands of costumed children extorting sweets from the neighbors. The castle at North Downs was normally isolated. And Dorian had worked a new glamour of avoidance, in a circle several kilometers around his estate. It would fade in the morning, but was strong enough now to shunt away sightseers.

Klaus took the lead this time, stalking up the spiral path, nearly dragging Dorian along in his impatience. Dorian had been careful to make this a good habit, freak storms and lightning-strikes not withstanding. For one short walk up the hill, into the grove for a hug and a soothing one-sided conversation – Klaus knew he was then bound home for food, a bath with James, sex, and sleep.

Slung over Dorian’s own bare shoulder was a linen bag that, on previous walks, had been filled with waterbottles and children’s toys, little savoury snacks and an electric torch. Now the bag held various leaf-wrapped powders and the sharp knife in a sheath made from a split-open bulrush.

“See?” Dorian told his love, once they reached the summit. “Just as it always is.” He coaxed Klaus to sit upon a rock in the center of the grove. Under the bare twisted branches, Dorian opened his bag. Began tracing a circle around himself and Klaus, with the spilled powders. Sea-salt and silver-dust, powdered rose petals and lavender buds – they wove together into delicate, intricate endless knots. When the circle was complete, Dorian sighed and sat down by Klaus.

Familiar lips brushed faintly over his hair – but nowhere near exposed skin. Dorian hoped his eyes weren’t shimmering with tears. “Oh, my love,” he whispered. “All we can do now is wait for my cousins.”

* * *

You have been so careful not to scare me today. You forget – I know your every mood, no matter how your voice and actions try to hide it. You’re so unhappy. Why? This is just the hill. I don’t like it – but you’ll leave this place, and we’ll soon be home again.

I like knowing that. I like living in more than just one moment at a time. Knowing what happened yesterday, and guessing at tomorrow. I wish I could tell you how much I’m learning, each new day. Maybe I can’t remember much of that unhappy past that still hurts you. But each day, I remember more of the last: what we did, what we ate, how we played or how my dark one and I loved, what I thought about it all. I still can’t understand most of your sounds, but I understand that they mean your thoughts. That frustrates me so much! When we were lovers, I knew what you were thinking. That was simple. But the rest of it is too hard. I think you still wish I could understand you. That I could make sounds, too.

Then I could ask you why my touch hurts you now. Why you can’t love me anymore. Why you watch me and my little one, until your eyes darken like blue bruises and your fingernails cut into your hand.

You’re doing something different, now. Pretty patterns. They remind me of the string game, the way the loops cross over each other. Dizzy and beautiful – I can’t watch them for long, so I watch you.

I wish I knew why you are sad, so I could make you happy again. You are ready to cry, and the way you hold me against you is hungry and careful and lonely. As if I’m not here, anymore, even though I am. You can touch me, if we’re careful. I’m not gone!

But – I think you are going. Away. Where hands can’t hurt you.

Will you take me with you? Even if I can’t touch you, I want to be with you, and be –

Oh! Look at the patterns – they shine!

* * *

As ever, the only warning Dorian had was the sudden white glow that pulsed along his circle of protection. A colder wind rattled the last remaining leaves from the oak trees. A smell of ozone threaded the air.

And circling the grove, outside the trees and under them right up the ring –

Were tall horses the colour of seafoam and dark indigo water, of dappled forest brown, of rosy dawn and turquoise evening skies. Horses with an intelligence in their secretive eyes that no mortal horse ever possessed. Their harnesses sleeted with silver, pale gold, and a hoard of jewels.

Their riders were as tall as Dorian, as milky-skinned, with hair of sheer gold or pewter or inky black. But in the weak glow from his magical circle, those calm, interested faces were still magnitudes more perfect than his, reminding Dorian that he’d begun life as a human. Some of them released floating sparks that drifted into the oak trees, and bloomed into flowers of warm golden light.

Klaus looked alert and intrigued, but not frightened. He sat on the rock, head turning to watch the pacing horses. He smiled one of those jet-fuelled grins, and reached out with the hand not holding Dorian’s.

“Klaus, don’t encourage them – “ Dorian whispered.

A black-haired lady swung down from her black mare, in a swirl of silken grey skirts. She wore no crown, and less jewelry than any of her court – but Dorian bowed his head, nonetheless.

“My lady,” he whispered. “My Queen of Air and Darkness.”

“My little love,” she said fondly, holding out her arms. “Why do you always bother with this nonsense?” One slippered foot nudged the powder-lines of loops and endless knots. Her toe-tip broke one line, and the rest went dark. “We bear you and yours no ill-will, child. You have been listening too much to hysterical mortal stories, again. Come, give your great-aunt a hug?”

Dorian didn’t remember rising, stumbling forward out of Klaus’ grip. Slender arms wrapped around him, held him close. A soft voice crooned into his ears.

Her touch didn’t hurt.

“Oh, darling child, what have you done now? We would never ask this of you – a bargain that is almost Unseelie in its price. You have shed too much human blood – that is why you cannot bear it, now. Did murder do any good in the world, to you – and to your lover?”

“N – no,” Dorian sniffled into her flowing hair.

“Even I cannot undo this, or stay it.”

“I know.”

“You cannot remain in the mortal world much longer. You haven’t the magic yet to shield yourself from iron. Come with us, and we’ll try to heal your soul.”

“Can’t,” Dorian sobbed. “Not without him.” They both looked up.

The black mare nuzzled at Klaus’ chest, while behind him a rose-coloured one breathed into his short hair. The man wore a look of delight, as he scratched under the black’s cheek. The mare closed her eyes and rested her head on his shoulder.

“That one is mortal,” said the Sidhe Queen, her blue-grey eyes half-lidded in aversion and pity. “He reeks of cold iron.”

“I love him, and he’s been hurt beyond imagining. Your magic is the only thing that might cure him.”

“We’ll see,” said the Queen, striding over to look down at the sitting man. He smiled up at her, unafraid, unflinching even when she gingerly touched his face and lips. “Oh,” whispered the Queen. “You have found a broken paladin, my darling. What’s done here is done – I cannot bring him back to what he was.”

“Could you take him forward into Faerie, make him one of us?” Dorian pressed.

“I don’t know,” the Queen mused, her sharp-featured face warming into speculation. Her hand made an abrupt gesture, the long fingers curling around –

A silver cup snapped into existence in her grip. The chalice was covered with wrought silver willow leaves and wheat-stems, with amber and garnet bosses carved like tiny faces – male, female, animal. Dark liquid rippled near the rim, giving off the heady scent of warm wine.

“This,” said the Queen, “is what I would give you to drink, Dorian. The grape it came from was planted by your many-times-great-grandmother – “

“I meant it for my own blood-kin, not some mortal soldier,” said a new female voice. “It would not change this one.”

“Grandmother?” Dorian began, seeing the family resemblance in the rider on a storm-blue stallion. She wore simple garb – laced trousers and tunic, but she carried herself as proudly as the queen. Her curly gold mane was braided up with cords of red wool, and her long face set in habitual sadness. “Are you the Saxon’s wife?” Dorian asked.

“I loved a man named Healdric, and had a son by him,” she said distantly. “But I couldn’t stay in his world. My magic was running out, like a tide. A week before he left me to go fight William the Bastard, my love’s kiss burned me like fire.”

“But you still mourn him?”

The midsummer-blue eyes washed with tears. “Always, child. We were two halves of the same soul.”

“As are this man and I.” Dorian stepped out of the queen’s embrace. “If he cannot cross, then neither of us go to Faerie. I will not share your mourning, Grandmother!”

“You will die a slow, painful death from the iron-sickness!” hissed the Queen.

Dorian drew the sheathed dagger from his linen bag. “No. I’ll die at dawn, on this hill.”

“In front of him? Leaving him? That is not a lover’s kindness!”

“My people will take him away before that,” said Dorian. “They’ll come up when it’s safe – they wait back in the castle, now.”

* * *

Now I know what you fear, my love. These are your people. They shine like you do, with your beauty. The ones you belong with!

But I don’t.

My dark one and my friends wait at home. I belong with them.

But I don’t want to leave you!

* * *

“What is his name?” asked a man’s slow deep voice.

“Klaus. Klaus Heinz von dem Eberbach.” Dorian turned to face the new speaker, and nearly fell backwards in shock. He had seen the Queen before, and her elegant courtiers. But never this –

The stallion was brown as beer, massive as a Percheron, gliding forward quite naked of halter or saddle. The rider was just as bare, his ruddy skin gleaming like that of an athlete in a Roman fresco, his beard and wild hair streaming with trapped twigs, leaves, white-polished bones, flowers, and feathers. His body seemed stocky, under the intermittent pelt that furred his legs, groin, chest, and arms. From just above his brow, a rack of antlers proud as an elk’s rattled against the oak branches. A musk of pine-sap and sex surrounded him, powerful but not unpleasant.

“My Lord,” Dorian stammered, not able to look away from those jet-black, too-knowing eyes. This was a different masculinity than his own, more encompassing – but the smile twitching the bearded lips said he was no stranger to Dorian’s styles of loving, either. With one nod of that antlered head, Dorian knew he’d abandon everything to vault up in front of the wild man. To drape himself over the stallion’s neck, clench on a thick penis and feel it plunder him until he screamed –

Klaus stood up, easing between Dorian and the newcomer. The lust faded, and Dorian huddled gratefully against his steady, calm lover, not caring when a stray touch made his skin sting.

“I did not summon you,” Dorian whispered.

“When you summon one magic, on this night,” said the wild man, “you summon them all. Fey, Wild, and Dark – you should be grateful your people don’t stand in the fields below, and that ours shield this hill with their light. You have shed blood in hatred, child – there is something in the night that can claim you for that, if you let it.”

“It was retribution!” Dorian insisted, shuddering.

“It was spite, because a pretty toy was taken from you and broken before you could play with it. Don’t you understand – he knew what would happen. He went willingly to this test, as to all the others – it’s what warriors do.”

“But it’s not fair,” Dorian muttered.

“Klaus,” said the Horned Man, the Hunter, the essence of wilderness and violent life, turning his eyes and mind from Dorian.

* * *

I stand, when I see you. I know you, from long before the unhappy times. I have seen your shadow on alley walls. Your footsteps in blood or snow. The movement of your passage, disturbing smoke and flames. I was never afraid of you – oh, maybe of your scent, of the wildness you bring – but never of what you stood for. You know what it is like to keep living in spite of pain and fear. To follow cold trails, or to walk into bad places when you’d rather run away. To accept death or worse as a reward for doing the right things at the right time.

The way you taught me was never easy.

Am I still doing what you taught me?

Hunter, I remember you – do you remember me?

* * *

“A good name,” rumbled the Hunter. “It starts low in the throat like a tiger’s cough, and ends with a cobra’s hiss. But he doesn’t know his name anymore – so how can anyone call him back with it?”

“You can’t, my love,” said the stately Queen. “The wine would unlock our Dorian’s magic. But this one is as a babe, and nothing of his past can reach him to set him free–”

“Huh,” said the Hunter, grinning. “You have become too complicated, woman. You each may live longer than mortals, but you forget how your race is still younger. They made you, the moment someone envied the hawk’s flight or the deer’s grace. You are always stronger and more beautiful than mortals – but not always wiser.”

“Pray, enlighten me?” begged the Queen, mock-angry and stifling her own laughter.

“The old ways are the best,” said the Hunter. “The ways painted on cave walls and carved into bone, the paths first learned in the simplest stories. A babe needs a mother. Eh, my sisters?”

Three small, brown, wiry women, dressed in short leopard-skin tunics and glowing cobalt-blue tattoos, urged their shaggy ponies around the Hunter’s horse. One woman seemed little more than a girl-child, with a fox-thin face and black braids as wild with leaves and debris as her brother’s. One looked on the verge of haggard old age, cheeks thinned, hair cut short and greying. But the middle sister had loose, straight hair the pale-gold of barley straw, and a sweet plain face. She clutched a sleeping, swaddled infant absent-mindedly to her chest, and circled her green-dappled pony around Klaus and Dorian. Thus mounted, she was still shorter than they were.

“Good bones. Strong. Fast. Enduring. Smart. Tall. He is already marked for the Dragon-clan, not for these Sidhe frivollers,” she said decisively, looking at Klaus’ scarred shoulders. “If the old magic will linger at all in him, he’ll pass the gate easily. Brother, I want a child off him.”

Dorian snarled, grabbing Klaus’ arm. “He’s mine!”

“He’s mortal, or he’s Dragon,” she shrugged. “That is my price, Sidhe princeling. He’ll come back to you – he loves you. But I want his blood in my clan-line.”

Dorian looked anguished, at the Queen and the Hunter. “I won’t whore him out.”

“Then let him choose,” the Hunter said gently.

“But – “

“Mortals,” swore the little mother, and held out her child to Dorian. “Here, pretty prince. Hold this.”

With an armful of warm sleepy baby, Dorian could only gape as the blue-tatooed mother wriggled her tunic over her head. The swirling marks spread across her whole body, sworls of cobalt fire outlining her flat belly and milk-swollen breasts.

* * *

There should be a reason for me to fear you. Hate you. I understand what you want from me – it’s not something that needs words. Your blue-patterned body and your scent ask it, with much courtesy. But I’m not afraid. Your smile says I’m not useless, that you won’t hurt me, or keep me longer than I need to stay.

But I don’t understand what you offer in return.

My lover must go with his people, I know. And I must go back to mine, the ones waiting at home. I’ll be sad forever, but that is the Way. I only wish I could let him know that I love him.

You ride closer, your body swaying against me. Your hand in my hair, pulling me down to rest against your shoulder. Not in good joy or unhappy pleasure – just peace and warmth.

Perhaps I remember you, now. You went away when I was very small? You used to sing to me, when I could understand sounds. Hold me. Feed me, the oldest way –

* * *

Dorian made an incredulous sound, as the little mother guided Klaus down her chest to one nipple.

“Drink, child of mortals,” she purred.

And Klaus – his Klaus! – drank, sucking the pale glowing milk for seven of Dorian’s shocked heartbeats.

The babe in Dorian’s arms stirred, made a sleepy complaint that he instinctively hushed by jogging it against him.

“You will be Dragon for a moment or two,” whispered the Hunter’s sister. “Or Dragon forever, if it will take. _Wake up, Klaus.”_

The black head snapped up, green eyes stunned. He reeled, and Dorian caught him with the arm not holding an ancient goddess’ baby.

“Klaus?” Dorian began.

Not concrete words. Not telepathy, as he’d always thought it would be. But the mind behind those beloved eyes touched his, their thoughts entwining as familiarly as their bodies had. They had shut out the politely-silent witnesses. Someone deftly took a restless infant from him, and kissed Dorian’s cheek. His arms fully around Klaus, Dorian realized that for the first time in days, there was no jangling burn of iron in that warm touch.

But such love! Such total acceptance of why Dorian had to leave. He felt a selfless resolve fray into wistful understanding, and this time there _were_ words:

* * *

 _You have to go. You can’t stay. And I – I can’t, either. My friends love me, but they can’t protect me. And I will never love them, as I love you. I have always loved you, even when I couldn’t show it. Some part of me kept you like a good dream that I could escape to, when the drug bit into me and began to shred my mind. In the bad times, I knew the difference between you and a lie. When I didn’t know myself, I knew you!_

 _But now the past is coming back to me. I do not think I am strong enough to bear it, again._

* * *

 _Klaus, my darling, my love, whatever you become, I will always love you! I want you to be safe and happy, with my little family of thieves – or with these wild people. If you come back to me with blue dragons tattooed on your skin, it doesn’t matter, as long as it’s you!_

* * *

The moment caught and held, in a resonance so deep it was felt in the bone and heart, rather than heard. Klaus gasped silently, trembling in Dorian’s grasp. They both felt his pain, as a fire ignited in his belly and raced outward along vein and nerve. Dorian wanted to scream for him, but his voice was mute as his lover’s.

It did not end. It had to end, or Klaus would surely die from the pain. Then Dorian selfishly didn’t want it to end – for until then, Klaus’ fate was still open.

 **First alternate ending: The Darkest Night**

Klaus sagged to his knees, dragging Dorian with him to the leaf-strewn ground. His face was white, lips blue-tinged from strain. He fell further, resting his forehead against the ground.

Dorian felt the incipient magic fade, along with their private communion. One of Klaus’ hands gripped around a gathered bundle of oak leaves and grass, then relaxed. The man let go of Dorian with his other hand, and rolled onto his side, facing Dorian – ending in that horrible fetal curl first seen in the NATO sanitarium.

The eyes were open and fully-intelligent, misted with tears. That mouth worked, for the first time since Dorian had rescued him, in silent words:

* * *

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I can’t. Can’t do this. Can’t hold it all – the pain, the anger, the power, the love. Can’t follow you. Can’t bear to leave you! Can’t go back. I’ve had two lives now, and they are both over. Can’t have a third. Can’t make this end, on my own. Don’t want to ask – I know what this will do to you. But, please – help me?

* * *

“No,” Dorian moaned, as Klaus found the sheathed knife where it had fallen unnoticed. One scrape along an exposed oak-root, and the flimsy bulrush sheath fell away. The titanium gleamed dull silver, like an ice-bound stream at twilight. Klaus held the dagger out to him, hilt-first. “Klaus, don’t ask – “

* * *

I’m sorry. I knew how to do this, once, but I can’t remember now. I know you know. You can cut quickly, without much hurt to me. Let me end, my golden one, my sweet Dorian. Let me sleep and never wake, as I should have done almost three years ago!

* * *

“If I kill you,” Dorian growled, “I won’t leave this hill alive. If you want me to live safe in Faerie, you have to promise me you will live on, here!”

* * *

A tired smile answered him, and a little shake of Klaus’ head. Dorian didn’t need to read Klaus’ thoughts to understand them.

* * *

A lie can’t be a true promise. We were both dead already, only we didn’t know it. It is time to go, my love. This is the choice of the Way – fast and clean, or slow and terrible. Both paths have the same honour, and the same end. I have learned this already – whatever happens to our bodies, our souls are free. I hope you have the kindness to kill me quickly, and to give yourself the same gift.

Please?

Yes?

 _Thank you._

* * *

It was not the same as in Russia. Not a cool practical clarity spiced with the unfamiliar need to cause fear and mental suffering first. This was calm, warm, inevitable – from the way Dorian’s hand curled around the offered hilt, to the half-second pause while Klaus smiled the last of those incendiary grins, to the practiced sideways strike of a blade Dorian had honed for himself.

Neat. Unflinching. Not the sacrifical slash across the throat, but a warrior’s release: clean between two ribs and deep into the heart.

Klaus’ eyes shuttered. He exhaled, half-turning toward Dorian and jarring the blade in his side. The man went limp then, as all the thrumming life fled out of his empty shell.

The scalding agony of mortal blood made Dorian whimper, and claw away his red-soaked silk gloves. Pain faded to a bearable sting, something easier to focus on than what he’d just done –

“Dorian,” said the Queen softly, breaking into his reverie. “It will be midnight soon. You need to decide, quickly.”

“I have,” Dorian said, not looking away from Klaus’ dead, peaceful face. “Leave me here – all of you.”

A plate-sized hoof pressed into the leaves and bloody earth, but Dorian did not look up. He didn’t know whether the Hunter would be smiling or sad, and couldn’t tell from that deep voice: “What he said about bodies and souls, child? It was true. You will meet him on some other turning of the Wheel, when your soul is again clean as his. Some paths to that future are shorter than others. Don’t be afraid.”

While that voice still echoed under the twisted trees, Dorian’s kin vanished: the elegant Sidhe with their gentle flower-lights, and the old rough gods of humanity itself.

Dorian looked up then. “I’m not afraid,” he said in wonder, to the thin moonlight and the swirling, softly-growling darkness that circled the hill outside the trees. If Klaus’ ghost lingered, he bade it to go on ahead, asking silently: You suffered, for some knowledge that made you smile as you died. Now it’s my turn, love.

Setting his back to the merciful knife, Dorian Red Gloria grinned up at the black, many-bodied wave that spiraled into the grove to meet him.

 **Coda**

Standing under the trees on yet another first day of November, James still remembered that long-ago dawn.

When Bonham had unshuttered one of the eastern windows. Peered across the park toward the hill – and cried out, as what they’d taken to be darkly-silhouetted oak leaves turned out to be restless ravens hopping from branch to branch. More birds fluttered back and forth on the ground below the trees.

James had wanted to run up the hill then, to see. Older and wiser heads prevailed.

They’d done everything as Lord Gloria asked: called the police at once, weathered the storm of inquiry. James never knew what had happened to the two Russians, after a pack of wild dogs had rendered them unnecessary. Russell’s interview made it certain that Lord Gloria had meant to die that night – though by a clean knife instead of feral hounds. James hoped desperately that both men had been dead when the animals found them.

No one had ever tracked down the dogs.

* * *

The old accountant pulled his coat closer around his shoulders. It was a good coat, no patches; Lady Barbara had trained him out of the worst of his stingy mania, after she’d taken him in. Being chief accountant to a nearly- impoverished noble house had been as challenging and fun as riding herd on Lord Gloria’s illegal empire. And James had learned, on that bleak dawn, two important truths.

He wasn’t cut out to be a thief, really.

And he couldn’t travel far from the place where the two men he’d loved most had died.

But now Lady Barbara was gone. The young Lord was a man on the grey side of middle age, with grandchildren of his own. The estate was legitimately wealthy again, in no small part to James’ efforts. It was all he could offer as a memorial.

A wind, scented with rain, shook the bare branches. James walked out from under the oaks and into the new sunlight, feeling a peace he hadn’t sensed in years from this place. Movement overhead caught his notice, and he looked up into the brilliant blue-and-gold sky.

High up, bodies gilt by daylight, two hawks caught the morning breezes and spiraled upward, side by side.

 **Finis**

 **Second alternate ending: Look To Me**

Klaus sagged to his knees, dragging Dorian with him to the leaf-strewn ground. His face was white, lips blue-tinged from strain. He fell further, resting his forehead against the ground.

Dorian felt the incipient magic tingle and grow, steadily enriching their private communion. The hurt seemed to lessen. One of Klaus’ hands gripped around a gathered bundle of oak leaves and grass, then relaxed. The man locked his other hand on Dorian’s, and used that leverage to roll onto his back. Gasping as if he’d run a marathon, Klaus stretched out to relax his knotted stomach muscles. His eyes were squeezed shut.

My love? Dorian asked, along that strong link.

The eyes blinked open. Fully-intelligent. Misted with tears of pain, shock, shame, relief. Klaus’ mouth worked, for the first time since Dorian had rescued him, in silent, crisply-formed words that had a mental echo:

Don’t you dare ever leave me!

With a sob of pure joy, Dorian fell into Klaus’ hungry embrace, into kisses that would never hurt either of them again.

Our first real kiss, Klaus told him, in between the third and the fourth. I should be angry with you, maybe?

I held out as long as I could, Dorian said righteously. You’re bloody difficult to thwart, when you really want something.

I know, said Klaus, setting aside shame for smugness. Where had he learned to smile like that? Each time, it seemed ready to melt Dorian’s very bones!

They had completely forgotten the onlookers, until one plate-sized hoof stamped the ground impatiently.

“Mortals,” laughed the mother. “Wouldn’t you rather have a bed in a nice warm cave?”

Mmmmm? Klaus and Dorian answered fuzzily.

“Generally,” said the Hunter with slow courtesy, “people wait for May Eve or Midsummer Night, to have sex on sacred hilltops. On your feet, you two – we’ve a long road to travel!”

Even standing, the two men clung to each other for several minutes.

When Dorian moved far enough away to look up at his lover’s face, he was awestruck. Klaus had always been beautiful, and nothing at first seemed changed. Then one saw the subtle glow deep in his pupils, a green shimmer like that in a wolf’s eye. The marks of mutilation hadn’t faded from his neck – they blazed in lightning-white slashes running down either side of his throat. Silver scale-patterns dazzled on his shoulders and down his back. Oh, his hair was still short – but when it grew out, Dorian knew it would be glossy-black as a raven’s wing, without a hint of grey.

I see from your face that it suits me, being one of the Hunter’s folk, said Klaus silently, almost shyly. I am not used to being worshipped, Dorian. But it feels good, too.

“Get used to it,” chuckled the mother. “Oh, my darling Dragon, ten thousand years from now there will be songs about you both, and your signs will be painted alongside ours in the secret caves where dreamers and shamans go. And it will be good – what do legends do but teach? This is a world in sore need of the lessons you could show it. But you,” she told Dorian, “you are no kin of mine, Sidhe-lord. Your lady awaits, with a gift for you.”

Dorian turned anxiously, saw the brimming cup awaiting him. “How much will it change me?”

As much and as little as I have changed, from a mouthful of milk, said Klaus, taking his elbow and urging him across the glade. I will always be here with you, no matter what happens to you.

“Not always,” Dorian muttered with some bitterness. “There is the matter of a bargain you struck –” he looked toward the mother on her spotted pony.

She laughed, a ringing sound that made Dorian’s heart cringe and leap with instinctive joy, all at once. “What, now? I have this one to wean and foster first.” She cuddled the still-sleepy infant closer. “Give me a few decades. I’ll make it worth your loss of one night with my Dragon,” she said, and winked at Dorian.

I love you, said Klaus, turning Dorian’s chin in one hand. He let go of Dorian’s arm, long enough to snag the Sidhe cup from the smiling Queen, and held the cup to Dorian’s lips. Don’t be afraid.

I’m not, said Dorian, and drank.

Coda

James shivered in his expensive coat, feeling the cold night breeze. It wasn’t his usual patched and shabby suit – that would never have given him entrance to this posh resort, no matter how much money he’d scraped together over the last five years to buy the brief right to be here.

It had become the pattern of his life. Bleak flats in cheap neighborhoods, odd and usually-illegal jobs requiring his skill at esoteric accounting, meagre food – all for the two or three days he spent here, trying to masquerade a rich and eccentric existence. So no one would care if the old Esquire wanted to spend All Hallows Eve alone on a hill.

Across the immaculate park, the castle glowed with festive lights and sounds, as party-goers met midnight with ghost stories and flutes of fine champagne.

James met it alone, sitting on a rock under twisted oak trees, and surrounded by carefully-drawn endless knots made of silver-dust and powdered rose petals. He was sore tempted, this night, to open the circle and take his chances with the prowling horrors in the dark.

It hadn’t been a great life, after Klaus and Dorian vanished without a trace. Eroica’s gang had all weathered the inquiry safely enough, thanks to that journalist’s shocking story. But James had seen Bonham and the rest of them age ten years overnight, after they’d done what they needed to with the Maserati, a few litres of jet-fuel, and the two drugged-out Russians.

Lady Barbara, bitch that Dorian had always said she was, took one look at them and kicked them out of the castle in under a week. That was sold as soon as her greedy son reached his maturity – off to be a hotel for bored business tycoons.

“I hope you’re happy, Dorian,” James whispered, still hurt by that long-ago dawn. No hint that his two lovers had survived as mortals or achieved Dorian’s mad scheme of immortality. Not a trace of them! Not then – and not on any of the nights James had finagled to watch for them, since.

He was the last survivor of the gang. And anyway, none of the rest had wanted this vigil. It was James’ self-appointed duty.

A noise brought the old man awake from his bitter doze. The jingle of harness, a low wash of music and speaking voices –

Somebody from the hotel, playing a prank? They’d done that to him, once or twice. Ready to borrow Dorian’s old attitude of lordly indignation, he stood up.

And gasped, sitting down again heavily, as the riders and their otherworldly mounts circled the grove counterclockwise. Horses the colour of dawn or blue-black night, dappled green and steel-grey. Riders so beautiful they nearly made his heart break all over again, until he remembered he’d once loved someone just as beautiful!

“Ohhhh,” the old man whispered, as the first of the riders completed their circuit and rode eastward down the hill. The last riders passed by him, and among them –

A golden-haired man on a golden mare, both of them festive with bright silks and jewels. Incongruously perched on the intricate saddle before him, a skinny brown child with long black hair tootled on a reed pipe. At one moment, James thought it was a girl – at another, the face had a boy’s slightly heavier features. The child blew a few sour notes. The golden Sidhe laughed, and showed his pupil how to hold the simple flute – without much success on his part, either.

The other rider made a scolding clicking noise, and reached over to grab the flute in one hand, and the child’s leather tunic in the other. When the laughing child was deposited bareback on the man’s ash-grey stallion, the half-naked rider took up the flute. Two identical sets of grey-green eyes half-closed in pure pleasure, as rills of glorious music sweetened the threatening night.

James closed his own eyes peacefully, the questions that had driven his life now answered.

They would go on forever, these two lovely strangers. They hadn’t died or run away to live in unknown exile. Klaus was beyond the tests of his past – beyond soldier or whore, unashamed of either, comfortable at last with himself.

And the widened blue eyes and broad smile from the golden Sidhe told James that – in spite of all the years between them, all his grief and their bliss – Dorian had recognized him, after all.

 **finis**


End file.
